A locust beans cubing machine was developed and its performance evaluated in this study. The machine is made up of three distinct and mutually controlled parts: The grinding part, the extrusion part, and the cutting part. Fermented locust beans is fed into the grinding part where they are ground and then moved to the extrusion compartment where it is extruded through a die head and then to the cutting part of the cubing machine. The locust bean is cut at regular intervals and at a preset dimension by blades attached to an actuator that operates in a regular vertical motion. The cubes are received from the outflow on the conveyor. At feed rates of 1 kg/min, 1.5 kg/min, and 2 kg/min and a cutter speed of 40 mm/s, the machine processed the beans with efficiencies of 60%, 86.67%, and 80% respectively. The cutter speed that gave the best range of efficiencies and formation of cubes across all the feed rates was 40 mm/s, while those processed at 20 mm/s, and 30 mm/s speeds were only partially formed.
Keywords: 5G, Data, NOC, Telecom, TQM
