# A Proposal for a Processing Line for Cauliflower and Broccoli Florettling
## 4 Prototypes of the Vegetable Crusher and Calibrator  
The prototypes of the designed devices were built at the Department of Food Processing Methods and Technology of the Lukasiewicz Research Network--Industrial Institute of Agricultural Engineering in Poznan. The components of both devices were made of X5 CrNi18-10 stainless steel sheets with a thickness of 1 to 5 mm. The main elements of the load-bearing frame, i.e., square tubes measuring 80 \(\times\) 80 mm or 50 \(\times\) 50 mm, were made of 3 mm sheet. The remaining elements were connected to the frame with welded joints (stiffeners) or screw joints (to facilitate their assembly and disassembly). The vegetable crusher is presented in Figure 4. The crusher has the following dimensions: length--260 cm, width--80 cm, height--180 cm. The crusher can be easily moved because polyamide wheels were mounted at the bottom of the frame (a). The wheels have brakes to stabilize the crusher during operation. The moveable working elements of the crusher are powered by a 1.1 kW electric motor (f) supplied with three-phase power. Its rotational speed can be controlled via a power control box (e); in case of emergency, power can be immediately cut off by pushing one of the two emergency stop buttons. The motor shaft features two pulleys (g), one of which drives the crushing roller, and the other drives the conveyor belt. V-belt tension can be adjusted with boomerang tensioners. One of the main components of the vegetable crusher is a processing table with two conical knives (b) with a height of 100 mm with a sharpened top edge; one knife has a diameter of 40 and 50 mm, and the other knife has a diameter of 50 and 70 mm. The round opening and the shape of a truncated cone facilitate cutting off leaf fragments and, most importantly, the florets attached to the stalk; when the apical floret is removed, the stalk can fall into the container placed under the processing table. The operator at the processing table separates leaf fragments from the raw material, and manually directs the remaining portion of the raw material into the crushing chamber (d). In the chamber, the crushing roller is positioned right above the screen; the roller features five uniformly distributed cutters with the shape of 4-, 6- or 8-pointed stars with a diameter of 385 mm and a thickness of 8 mm. The star-shaped cutters are inserted into screen openings (c), and large florets are deposited on the rounded edges of the screen openings and are broken into smaller fragments. The crusher is equipped with three interchangeable screens whose openings have a width of 40, 60 and 80 mm. Small florets pass through the screen openings and fall onto the conveyor belt. If the crusher is to be used separately, minimum four plastic containers (1200 \(\times\) 800 \(\times\) 1000 mm) are needed, e.g., openwork Big Box containers (Paleteo, Poznan, Poland): one for the processed raw material and three for semi-processed products (leaf fragments, stalks, and separated florets). Since the processing table is positioned at a height of 160 cm above ground (because a container for stalks is to be placed under the table), a raised platform is required to accommodate the operator and a container with the raw material to be processed. The calibrator of cauliflower and broccoli florets, including its main elements, is presented in Figure 5. The calibrator has the following dimensions: length--240 cm, width--130 cm, height--200 cm. The calibrator consists of (a): a load-bearing frame, a hopper with a feeder and a stirring rod, the load-bearing frame of a screen box with an angle adjustment mechanism, the screen box, and the power drive system. The moveable working elements of the calibrator are powered by a 0.55 kW electric motor supplied with three-phase power. Similar to the crusher, the rotational speed of the motor can be controlled via a power control box (e); in case of emergency, power can be immediately cut off by pushing one of the two emergency stop buttons.