Pineapple Slicer Machine Prototype Has Potential for Production

Pineapple is one of Thailand’s important agricultural exports. Each year, the supply is more than plentiful, leaving a large part to be processed into a variety of products, including canned pineapple, preserved pineapple, and baked pineapple. All these processed pineapple products, however, require manual labor to slice the fruit before the sliced pieces can be processed using various cooking techniques.

As an attempt to offer a solution, two students from Rajamangala University of Technology Thanyaburi’s Agricultural Technology program decided to invent a slicer machine that could help expedite the process as well as taking care of the labor-intensive part of the job.

“The machine works best with Sriracha pineapple, which it can slice at the rate of 194kg/hour. When we tried it with Pattavia pineapple, the rate dropped to 138kg/hour,” said the inventor team, Thammaphol Kasemsuksathaporn and Teerapong Tassanalai.

“The machine has four main parts: the structure, motor, blades and conveyer system. Raw, de-skinned whole pineapples are fed into the part at the top, then they will be transported via the conveyor system to the blades for slicing. Then sliced pieces will drop into the tray in front of the machine,” the team explained.

The prototype has the potential to be manufactured into real working machine, which will be of great value to pineapple farmers and small-scale processed pineapple industry.