Importance

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Abstract

Pepper coring and slicing apparatus including a conveyor having individual pepper holding devices for holding peppers with the stem portion upward, a processing station for coring and splitting the peppers, and a discharge station where the peppers are ejected from the pepper holders and dropped onto a conveyor for further processing. The conveyor includes a pair of adjacent plates for holding each pepper by means of a resilient rubber structure half of which is carried on each plate of the pair and between which the pepper is disposable with the bottom of the pepper seated in an opening between the two plates. When the conveyor moves the pepper into the processing station, a pair of side cutting blades and a corer descend from above to core the pepper and slice through the pepper sides while a second slicing knife rises from below through the hole between the conveyor plates and cuts the center of the pepper beneath the core. The core is stripped from the corer and remains with the pepper. At the discharge station, as the conveyor moves around a sprocket, the plates on which the pepper is being carried are rotated angularly outward away from one another to release the pepper from the resilient retainers. The timing sequence of the apparatus is such that when the conveyor is moving a pepper into the coring and slicing station, the coring and slicing knives are retracted and disabled, and when the coring and slicing knives are actuated to core and slice the pepper, the pepper moving conveyor is disabled.

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First Claim