CONSTRUCTION OF A BLENDER

ABSTRACT

Blender is an electric machine for size reducing soft food or liquid mixture. Blender is some time called liquidizer consists of a glass jar or jug containing a steel blade assembly at the base driven by a small electric motor. Construction of blender was done based on the principle of size of reduction using electric motor as the major driver force.  During the construction of blender, we adopted different stages which includes:

i.   The production of preliminary drawings with details and dimensioned sketches.

ii.   Choosing of design and materials used in the construction.

iii   Construction and fabrication of all the component of the blender which includes blender container, shires, blade and the motor, all these was coupled together.

iv.  Examination and testing of the performance and efficiency of the machine.

After strictly adopting the aforementioned stages, a well structured blender made of steel (stainless & mild) was obtained as the end product.  Also, for effectiveness of the size reducing action, the steel blade was sharpened and also the number of the blade was increased.  Actually, the material selected for this project has reduced the cost of painting and it is found to be anti corrosion due to the high degree of chromium contents and other alloy. The main object of this project which is to be able to fabricate the component using the primary tool in the mechanical workshop was achieved after all the difficulties uncounted during the construction of blender. The project construction of blender in relation to materials for construction costed N22,000.  Comparing this with the price of normal domestic blender, can be seen to be extremely high.  This high is due to the material of construction and fabrication processes. In considering all the resources channeled towards the construction, it can be rightly stated that the machine is economical in relation to materials used in the construction and the performance of the machine after construction.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Blender as a size reduction machine is mostly used in both home for domestic purposes and in the chemical industry.  In chemical industry, size reduction or communication is usually carried out in order to increase the surface because, in most reactions involving solid particles, the rate is directly proportional to the area of contact with a second phase. Thus the rate of combustion of solid particles is proportional to the area presented to the gas, though a number of secondary factors may also be involved; for example, the free flow of gas may be impeded because of the higher resistance to flow of a bed of small particles.  Again in leaching, not only is the rate of extraction increased by virture of the increased area of contact between the solvent and the solid, but the distance the solvent has to penetrate into the particles in order to gain access to the more remote pockets of solute is also reduced. This factor is also important in the drying of porous solids, where reduction is size causes both an increase in area and a reduction ion the distance the moisture must travel within the particles in order to reach the surface; in this case the capillary forces acting on the moisture are also affected.

There are a number of other reasons for carrying out size reduction.  Thus, it may be necessary to break a material into very small particles in order to separate two constituents, especially where one is dispersed in small isolated pockets.  Further, the properties of a material may be considerably influenced by the particle size; for example, the  chemical reactivity of fine particles is greater than that of coarse particles, and the colour and covering power of a pigment is considerably affected by the size of the particles. Again, far more intimate mixing of solids can be achieved if the particle size is small. Also, blender is very much important because domestically it aids both the grinding and blending of the material at the same time.  It is a very fast process which have substituted the use of manually operated grinding machine due to its high speed, easy to operate/handle, portable etc.