Melon shelling in most part of the world is usually done manually by hand, which is time consuming, strenuous and it discourages mass production of melon. Therefore, there is need to develop a motorized melon shelling machine for shelling various types of melon in order to minimize the drudgery involved in manual shelling and increase mass production and commercialization of the crop. The sheller comprises of the hopper which contains the unshelled melon seeds and is opened directly to the shelling chamber, the inner part of the hopper is finned to form cells which disallowed melon seeds to pass through its breadth. The shelling chamber consists of shelling disc of radius 390mm which carries the vane that bends the melon against the cells located at the bottom of the hopper during shelling process; the disc is driven by 1 horse power electric motor. The machine was made from locally sourced materials using simple fabrication processes. The percentage of melon been shelled in two successive runs for the two types of melon (Bara and Serewe) with 600 pieces of melon per run was found to be above sixty percent (60%) and the overall shelling efficiency of the machine is above 67% which depends on the moisture content which must not be too lean nor too rich which depends on the type of melon being shelled.
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Volume 1 No 1