Improved Design And Performance Evaluation Of Soap Stamping And Tableting Machine For Small Scale Manufacturers For Sustainable Development

ABSTRACT

This study describes the designed and development of an integrated soap tableting, stamping and shaping machine. The machine comprised of conveyor belt, tableting edge, compression dies and ejection units in a single system. The performance test carried out to evaluate the effectiveness of the system indicated the efficiency of the machine to be 98.18% for tableting and 97.62 for stamping and shaping operations respectively. Also, the capacity of the machine was determined to be 924 tablets per hour at an efficiency of 96.10% at a conveyor speed of 380 rpm. The machine significantly reduced drudgery, improved product appearance, shapes the soap tablet and eradicated the imprecision associated with the previous machines. The machine shapes the soap tablet with a formation stress of 54371Pa as against the yield strength of soap which is between 110-350Pa.All materials used in the fabrication of the machine were sourced locally and the cost for producing this machine is seventy five thousand naira (N75000)