Students develop device to make cooking easier

Quite often, tasks such as peeling skin pods of vegetables such as hyacinth beans (avare kaalu), peas, removing dried skin of groundnuts, Bengal grams and even grating coconuts can be time-consuming.

Eighth semester mechanical department students of Vidyavardhaka College of Engineering (VVCE) - Abhishek M S, Anil Ponappa and Manjunath Barve - under the guidance of Head of the Mechanical Department Prof G B Krishnappa have designed and fabricated a multipurpose device that solves many a problem.

While dishes made using hyacinth beans are quite popular in the State, peeling the skin pods is often a laborious task. The multipurpose device developed by the students uses two nylon rollers through which the beans can be passed, following which the skin peel off automatically.

The device can be operated by switching on the 0.5hp motor or in case of power cut, you can use the handle to turn the rollers and peel the skin pods. This device can also be used to grate coconuts.

Traditionally, de-husking of rice involved pounding the grains using a wooden stick, which was a strenuous process and led to breakage of the grains. But, passing the grains through this device can ensure that your family can enjoy nutritious rice.

While electric motors in the range of three to 10 hp are available in the market, they are high cost and are generally unsuitable to be used in common households. It is keeping this in mind, the students developed the easy-to-operate multipurpose device.