Conclusions

The rig designed recorded results very well. The beam transducer method employed was well suited to recording small cutting forces. However, poor physical property tests, and the complexity of cheese behaviour made it difficult to find trends with cut force.

Analysis of force through a cut shows that a cut using a blade can be separated into three sections: blade entry, cut, and blade exit. Analysis of these sections suggests that frictional forces on the side of the blade dominate the cutting force. As a result, wire cutting forces are much lower in comparison. But testing also shows they can fail easily. A thick wire, of over 0.5mm allows reasonable failure resistance and also produces lower cutting force than blades. Cutting with wire also produces a cleaner cut because very little material is deposited onto the wire surface. This is not the case with blades.

Trends between cutting force and blade geometry show proportionality between area in contact with blade, and cutting force. Proportionality is also shown between wire diameter and cutting force.

Research in literature on cutting cheese with wire allowed for the manipulation of theories for cutting with blades. Unfortunately, poor physical property tests made it difficult to support these theories empirically.