Impact of the wedge angle on the specific cutting energy of black radish during the exploitation of guillotine knife

The paper presents the influence of cutting conditions of black radish guillotine knife on specific cutting energy value. The tests were carried out using the texture meter: Texture Analyser TA.XTplus Stable Micro Systems. The structure of the black radish is heterogeneous and, therefore, in order to study the specific cutting energy of black radish its parenchyma was taken from a few specific places. The samples were cut with a longitudinal and transverse orientation of the fibers relative to movement of the working tool. The cutting process was carried at the knives wedge angles: 2.5°; 5°; 7.5°; 10°; 12.5°; 15°, the knives moved at the speed of 0.83 mm·s-1. The results were statistically analyzed using the program Statistica 8.0. The statistical analysis showed the impact of the place of sampling, direction of fibers in the black radish parenchyma samples and knife wedge angle on the specific cutting energy. The black radish parenchyma samples obtained from the core of the top layer showed the highest specific energy of cutting. Furthermore, the specific cutting energy showed higher value when the orientation of fibers was in the transverse direction rather than longitudinal. The highest value of the specific cutting energy was obtained for the cutting knife wedge angle of 15°, and the lowest for the knife with β = 2.5° wedge angle.