Design and prototyping of a low-cost manually operated bamboo-cored incense-stick making machine

The design and prototyping of a low cost handoperated incense-stick making machine to alleviate the labor intensive work associated with the production of bamboo-cored incense sticks is outlined in this paper. The machine is based on the mechanism of extruding the incense stick paste over the bamboo stick. The main components of this machine include a hand-crank, a compound gear-train system, rack and pinion system and an extruder. As the paste used is of a semi-solid nature and a high force was needed for extrusion, a confined compression test using Universal Testing Machine was carried out to obtain rough estimates of the force required for the extrusion. During this experiment a known force was applied, varied and exerted on the rack until the paste was extruded out of the die. Using this force estimate, a suitable two-stage compound gear-train system with mechanical advantage of 9:1 and a hand-crank was designed. The lever and gear-train system was designed ergonomically so that the applied force results in a minimal arm-muscle fatigue for the operator.