Fruit and vegetable cutter

Idea was born

Idea about this product was born on some beautiful Sunday morning when I was preparing my favorite breakfast – The fruit salad. This is the mixture of fresh sliced fruits such as apple, kiwi, banana with honey and lemon juice. Mmm… For sure.. good energy bomb for the morning. The only thing I don’t like about making this salad (and that’s why I don’t make it very often)is that it takes too much time to cut fruit into small pieces. At that point I was started thinking; how to make some tool which will split and cut fruit in one operation. There are a lot of different tools how to slice fruits but all just splits the fruits in one way. Maybe is something out there but I haven’t seen it yet. If something similar already exists please let me know. :)

Theory background

So in theory my mechanics works on very similar machine (mincer) for making sausages or mincemeat. You put into the machine pieces of meat and you get tiny pieces of meat (mincemeat). So I create such design which will push fruit through the desired splitter and after that is blade which will cut fruit into small pieces. Also you can print different shapes of splitter (hexagonal, circular,…) or different numbers of blades to get different sizes of fruits. I plan to create all parts with printed plastics because I want to see how far we can use printed parts and what forces withstand printed plastics.

Cruel reality

Two weeks ago I create first prototype of whole model (V1). I must say that first design was looking very nice and all parts seem to work as it should. But what will happen when I try to slice a piece of apple or banana?

Well the problem appeared as soon apple hit the splitter and the table was starting rotating which prevent to push apple through the splitter. Second problem was that table was printed with 10% infill and 2 shells which make table bend which create very big friction and it stops rotating. I try to apply some force but I almost break main spiral shaft. I had better success with soft fruits such as banana, but still this is not what I want.

#Countertop Challenge

In the mean time I was designing V2 of my prototype, which is a lot smaller then predecessor V1, Thingiverse announces their competition. So I was thinking that my idea is good enough to compete and I was hoping to finish my design by the end of the competition. But problems which I wasn't expecting appeared and redesigning process began.

The Future awaits…

The main problem I see it now is that the splitter is not sharp or thin enough to cut apples. So in worst case I will have to use steel blades or something similar which can easily cut fruits or vegetables.

So I uploaded the version V2 of my prototype where all known problem should be fixed. I didn’t have time to print and test it yet. I will do this next week and I hope to get some progress in cutting apples.

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If you like my idea, please support it and click the like button. ;)

Stay tuned,

Jernej.

P.M.: render pictures are V2, real pictures are V1.

Print settings:

- table and spiral shaft : 5 shells, 1mm top/bottom shells, 50% infill, 0.2 layer height

- housing : 2 shells, 15% infill, 0.3 layer height

- handle-1-2-3: 3shels, 15% infill, 0.2 layer height

- cover, splitter, blade : 2 shells, 15% infill, 0.2 height

FYI: i didn't manage to test V2 version yet.