Semi-automatic kneading machine for the prevention of occupational diseases in marzipan artisans

Abstract

Elderly people are a very vulnerable group to perform any work; as the years go by, the individual progressively loses body functions and for this reason profes-sional diseases are increasingly recurrent when we are in advanced age. The study population consisted of fourteen artisans, ninety-six percent of whom were in the age range of 65 to 80 years who live in the Association of artisans in the parish of Calderón in Quito, Ecuador; the work sampling method was applied where 20 minutes were obtained as standard time for the Kneading operation, which is per-formed in a manually operated machine, processing 5 kg of marzipan in each pro-duction cycle, during which time the workers remain standing and performing re-petitive movements; the objective of the research is to design an appropriate tech-nology used in the Kneading operation. With the previous study of modern man-ual kneading equipment, information was obtained on concepts such as shear force, bending moment, and tensile strength, used to proceed with the sketch and then simulate in SolidWorks Software for Windows. At the end of the data col-lection, we proceeded to design a dough mixer with AISI 1050 steel rollers, with HR processing; which allowed to reduce the repetitive movements of the right and left hand in 25000 TMU when processing the dough, reducing the current risk of contracting occupational diseases by repetitive movements such as Bursi-tis, which some people present nowadays because they are kneading manually. The bursas that are present in the joints of the human body become inflamed, an-other disease that was avoided is the Syndrome of the metacarpal tunnel that inca-pacitates the functionality of the hand. In the psychological area, these artisans are demotivated by the impossibility of developing activities when they were young-er. With the present research it is foreseen to give them a better quality in the han-dling of the operations, because in the design special attention was paid to the er-gonomic aspects and to the principle of the least effort.

Keywords: Occupational Diseases, Marzipan Artisans, Sheeter

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1001158