A technique for the mechanical processing of living vegetative tissue such as peeling and cutting of fruits and vegetables with the minimum damage to the processed tisue was investigated. The performance of high frequency vibrating blade on cutting of living vegetative tissue was examined. It has been found that the high frequency vibrating blade can reduce the damage to the processed tissue significantly in comparison to a still blade. This is due to that more cells are severed by tensile force associated withlarge tissue deformation rather than shear force if a still blade used. The high frequency vibrating blade creates little tissue deformation because of the viscoelastic nature of living vegetative tissue and also the high speed cutting with both continuous impact force and the amplitude of the vibration which is about the smae as or little less than the size of cell. Cutting with such as shear force can give a high performance to minimize number of severed cells. Two different frequencies (40 kHz with 0.03 mm amp. and 115 Hz with 3 mm amp.) were tested. The higher frequency gave better results in both processing time and cutting quality in terms of unwanted cell damages. It has been known that the quality of solanaceous fruits such as tomato, eggplant, watermelon, cucumber etc, can be improved significantly by developing the grafting method which can finish smooth cutting surface by reducing the damage to the vascular tissue of the stems of scion and stock by significant degree. A direct application of this cutting technology for vegetative tissue processing has been made in the development of a new grafting robot system.
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