DEVELOPMENT OF A FULLY AUTOMATED POPCORN MACHINE FOR MEDIUM SCALE POPCORN PRODUCTION

Abstract

Many popcorn vendors exist on the streets, in the market places, at event centres, in shopping malls, and so on. Most of these popcorn vendors in Nigeria prepare popcorn with popcorn machines that are manually operated. This research work has developed a model of popcorn vending machine that is automatically operated. A mechanical framework has been designed, and a control algorithm has also been developed. The machine is fully automated in that the only thing an operator has to do is to push the necessary command buttons then a whole batch of popcorn will be prepared with very limited human intervention. The machine saves time by preparing a batch of popcorn in 7 minutes against the 10-12 minutes preparation time for manually operated popcorn machines. Two microcontrollers are used; one to control the temperature of the popping chamber and the other to control five actuators. The microcontrollers were programmed in C language using Arduino integrated development environment. The actuators are; the oil valve, corn valve, stirrer motor, sugar valve and the linear actuator responsible for tilting the pan for the purpose of delivering a prepared batch of popcorn. The responses of the actuators in running the popcorn preparation process were simulated in MATLAB and then appropriate controllers were introduced where necessary to bring these responses within the required range specified. Test and performance evaluation were finally carried out on the developed machine and the results proved satisfactory