167 Ginaca Pineapple Processing Machine

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GINACAPineapple Processing M achine

INTERNATIONAL HISTORIC MECHANICAL ENGINEERING LANDMARK HAWAII SECTION

DOLE PACKAGED FOODS COMPANY HONOLULU, HAWAII FEBRUARY 19, 1993


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INTERNATIONAL HISTORIC

MECHANICAL ENGINEERING LANDMARK

GINACA PINEAPPLE PROCESSING MACHINE1911

COM ME RCIAL PINEAPPLE PROD UCTION BEGAN IN HAWAII ABOUT

1890. FRUIT WAS HAND-PEEL ED AND SL ICED T O M ATCH CAN SIZESFOR EXPORT . IN 1911, JAMES D . DOLE H IRED H ENRY G. GINACA TODE SI GN A MACH I N E TO AUTOMATE TH E PROCE SS . AS FRUI T

DROPPED THROUGH THE GINACA MACHINE A CYLINDER WAS CUT

TO PROPER DIAMETER, TRIMMED TOP AND BOTTOM, AND CORED.

TH I S MACH I N E MORE TH AN TRI PLE D PRODUCTI ON , MAKI N G

PINEAPPLE HAWAIIS SECOND LARGEST CROP. IN THE FASTERGINACA MACHINES NOW USED AROUND THE WORLD, THE PRINCIPLE

REMAINS UNCHANGED.

THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERS 1993


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Historical Significance

Commercial pineapple production whichstarted about 1890 with hand peelingand cutting operations soon developeda procedure based on classifying thefruit into a number of grades by diame-ter centering the pineapple on the core

axis and cutting fruit cylinders to provide slices to fitthe No. 1, 2 and 2-1/2 can sizes.

Up to about 1913, various types of hand operatedsizing and coring machines were used to performthis operation. The ends of the pineapple were firstcut off by hand. The pineapple was then centered onthe core and sized. Production rates were about 10to 15 pineapples per minute. A large amount of laborwas required, and it was not practical to recover theavailable juice material from the skins.

Under these conditions the number of machinesrequired for production rates above about twentytons of pineapple per hour became so great that itwas not feasible to build canneries equipped forlarge scale production of pineapple products.

About 1911 Henry G. Ginaca of the HonironCompany, Honolulu, was engaged by Mr. J. Dole,founder of Hawaiian Pineapple Company, to developthe machine which made the Hawaiian pineappleindustry possible and which bears his name today.

The term Ginaca is now generally applied to avariety of machines which are designed to automati-

cally center the pineapple on the core, cut out a fruitcylinder, eradicate the crushed and juice materialfrom the outer skin, cut off the ends and remove thecentral fibrous core.

The cored cylinder leaving the Ginaca machine isthen passed to a preparation line where each fruit istreated individually to remove cylinder defects oradhering bits of skin.

The early Ginaca had a production capacity ofabout 50 pineapples per minute and required fromthree to five operators depending on how muchinspection of the machine product was performed at

the machine.The increase in production from 15 to 50 pineap-

ples per minute was enough to reduce the cannerysize to economical proportions and made possiblethe design of efficient preparation lines. Once thenew preparation and handling systems were proventhe industry grew rapidly.

The first production Ginaca machine was actually

Hand sizi ng and cori ng machine

a combination of devices developed and patentedseparately.

The fi rst device was designed to feed, center andsize the fruit cylinder. I t consisted of a chain provid-ed with pushers, a centering head, which was thesubject of a separate patent, and a stationary sizingknife.

The second was a six-pocket turret mechanismdesigned to receive the sized pineapple cylindersand remove the ends and core between the feed anddischarge stations.

The third device was a skin eradicator to remove

the juice material adhering to the skin. A variety ofsystems were used for this operation depending onthe cannery and product requirements and the stageof machine development.

To cut a clean fruit cylinder i t was soon found nec-essary to rotate the sizing knife, and when thedevices developed for the individual operations werecombined the first Ginaca consisted of:


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1. Feed chain provided with flat faced pushers atregular intervals.

2. A centering head consisting of approximately 14pairs of fingers having mechanicalcross linkages which accuratelylocated the pineapple for sizing.

3. A rotating, circular sizing knife inclined 30degrees to the horizontal. (Thepineapple was pushed abouthalfway through the sizing knife bythe feed chain pusher and lefthanging for the next pineapple topush it completely through.)

4. An eradicator consisting of a cleated belt , gridsand a knife which cut the juice

material from the out skin removedby the sizing kni fe. In the earlydays of the industry there was littledemand for juice and the eradicatorwas often omitted.

5. A stationary curved tube which guided the fruitcylinder from the inclined sizingknife to the feed station of the verti-cal turret.

6. A vertical turret mechanism provided with a six-pocket turret to receive the fruitcylinders, timed, rotating end cut

knives, a spring-loaded plunger tomove the fruit in the turret pocketagainst a stop so that the upper endcould be cut off by a timed rotatingknife. A hollow core tube with acrank and slider mechanismremoved the core after the endswere cut off.

1919 Model Ginaca

After a period of initial success which firmly

established the preparation methods used, theGinaca was redesigned as a production machine in1919 and this model is still used in one form oranother by many canners today.

The inclined rotating sizing knife, the stationarycurved transfer tube between the sizing knife andturret and a vertical turret mechanism were retained features which have also been used on machines

The Gi naca was redesigned as a product ionmachine in 1919.

manufactured in the mainland U.S. and Australia.

However, there were a number of disadvantagesto this original arrangement from the standpoint ofmodern requirements for design, performance andmaintenance.

In general, the basic arrangement of the originalGinaca and 1919 model with the inclined sizing knifeand vertical turret required more complex mecha-

nisms, more drives, shafting and bearings and morebrackets and supports than later straight throughdesigns.

M ost of these machines which incorporate a verti-cal turret are characterized by maximum speeds of65 pineapples per minute, light drives, open gearingand high annual maintenance costs in terms of theamount of pineapple produced.


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1925 Model Ginaca

Post-World War Designs

After a number of years of constantly increasingproduction, a new high-speed machine was designedat the Hawaiian Pineapple Company capable ofpreparing from 90 to 100 pineapples per minutedepending on fruit size.

The increase in speed from 65 per minute with the1919 model was accomplished by aligning the turretwith the sizing knife axis so that there is a straight pathfor the fruit cylinder between the sizing knife andthe turret feed pocket and a hooked pusher designwhich delivers each pineapple completely throughthe sizing knife without the need to wait for the fol-lowing pineapple to complete the sizing operation.

About sixty 1925 model Ginacas have been builtand most are still in operation. There have beennumerous changes in details of eradicators, feeds,auxiliary drives and construction and in one form oranother most of the machines have been completelyrebuilt several times to improve details to satisfychanging cannery requirements or simply to replaceworn out parts.

The 1925 Ginaca machines were used through

the Word War I I years up to about 1947. Al though

the potential market was not large, improving theGinaca design remained a challenging engineeringproblem.

Since 1947 at least five major attempts have beenmade to improve the basic Ginaca design to betterfulfill modern cannery requirements.

In three of the result ing designs the combinationof gravity force and pineapple velocity relied on totransfer the cylinder from the sizing knife to the tur-ret pocket is replaced by either vacuum, appliedthrough a seal at the low end of the turret, or by airpressure introduced between the ends of twopineapple cylinders at the sizing knife position. The

resulting pressure between the free cylinder and theone being cut, forces the first cylinder into the turret

a method of operation called jet transfer.

By using air to move the cylinder into the turretthe path of the pineapple through the machine canremain horizontal. T he expense of the necessaryvacuum or air and the extra complications of theseals, pipe and nozzles, more than make up for thedoubtful advantages of horizontal operation.

Production speeds are also limited to a maximumof about 100 pineapples per minute and most of theunits in production operate at about 75.

1925 MODERN MACHI NECapaci ty105 pineapples per minute Size6 feet 6 inches high

6 feet6i ncheswide 8 feet 0 inches long Power3horsepow

Only one horizontal machine design has had anydegree of success but even this model is limited inspeed to about 75 pineapples per minute. This is anexpensive and complex machine requiring three pri-mary drive housings plus the jet transfer construction.

Three of the designs were complete failuresnotonly because of their complexity and expense, butalso because they failed to perform as expected andwere less efficient than existing machines.

One post-war design based on the use of air cylin-ders to perform feeding and coring operations failedwhen it proved impossible to obtain cylinder opera-tion in sequence fast enough to produce more than40 pineapples per minute.

In general, the post-war designs which departedfrom the original Ginaca gravity transfer have beenmore complex and more expensive than the earliermachines. They have proven to be less reliable andmore difficult to maintain and there have been noadvantages in production capability.

The Ginaca machine made canning pineapple eco-nomically possible. As a result, until the jet ageHawaii had an agricultural economy and pineapplewas the second largest crop. Until 1990 pineapplewas the sole crop and industry of L anai, an island ofthe chain of islands constitut ing the State of Hawaii.The pineapple industry contributed to the migrationof people from many parts of the world such asPuerto Rico, Mexico, the Philippines, etc. adding tothe ethnic diversity of the islands.


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Biography

JAM ES D. DOL E

James Dole (Jim) wasborn in Jamaica Plain,M ass., a suburb of

Boston, on September 27,1877 to Rev. Charles Fletcherand Frances DrummondDole. Jim was the oldestof four children.

A few days after he was

born, an old man who hadlost a son, brought a gift of$50 for him. This was thebeginning of the savingsaccount which Jim usedwhen he first set out forHawaii in 1899 to seekhis fortune.

Once Jim started growingpineapple on his Wahiawaplantation, he realized thatthe market possibilities werehuge in the U.S. and the restof the world. Canning woulddo it and canning, he decidedwas the only logical way to market Hawaiian pineapple. On December 4,1901, H awaiian Pineapple Company, L imited (H apco) was incorporated.

In 1911, when a lot of pineapples were growing in the fields aboutready to pick and the need for a machine that would process fruit morequickly was apparent, D ole hired Henry Gabriel Ginaca to try to developa machine that would peel, core, size, and trim pineapples.

Jim built his cannery on a solid base of the moral principles he hadabsorbed from his mother and father. We have buil t this Company on

Qualityand Qualityand Quality was based on Jims principles ofquality and morality. Jim died in M ay 1958.


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Biography

H ENRY A.G. GINACA

Henry Ginaca was bornM ay 19, 1876. Therecords are not clear

whether he was born inCalifornia or in Winnemucca,Nevada, where his father hadworked as a civil engineer.H is father was Italian, hismother French.

Ginaca inherited his fathersaptitude for engineering. Whilea teenager, he became anapprentice at the old UnionIron Works in San Francisco.He also took a course in mathe-matics to enable him to becomea mechanical draftsman.

He was hired by the HonoluluIron-Works and came to H ono-lulu, apparently to work onengine designs. I t was here that

the young designer came to the attention of James D. Dole, founder ofthe young and still struggling Hawaiian Pineapple Company.

Dole hired Ginaca to work specifically on a mechanical fruit peelingand coring machine. H e joined Hapco in M arch, 1911, at a salary of$300 per month, a substancial wage in those days. Ginaca was 35years old.

In the first year of Ginacas employment he came up with the initialdesign for his machine. From then until 1914 he added improvementsand refinements to it. Though many bugs had to be worked out,Ginacas machine was a success from the beginning. T he machine wasawarded a gold medal at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco

in 1915.

In 1914 Ginaca and his two brothers decided to return to themainland and try their hand at mining. The mining ventures of thethree brothers were failures. For Henry Ginaca, a productive careercame to an untimely end on October 19, 1918, when he died of influenzaand pneumonia at the old M other Lode mining camp of H ornitos.He was only 42.


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The H istory and Heritage Program of ASM E

The ASM E H istory and Heritage Program began

in September 1971. To implement and achieve itsgoals, ASME formed a H istory and H eritageCommittee, composed of mechanical engineers, his-torians of technology, and the Curator ofM echanical and Civil Engineering at theSmithsonian Institution. The Committee provides apublic service by examining, noting, recording, andacknowledging mechanical engineering achieve-ments of particular significance.

The Ginaca machine is the 37th InternationalH istoric M echanical Engineering Landmark to be

designated. Since the ASM E H istory and HeritageProgram began, 155 H istoric M echanical

Engineering Landmarks, 6 Mechanical EngineeringHeri tage Sites, and 4 M echanical EngineeringHeri tage Collections have been recognized. Eachreflects its influence on society, either in its immedi-ate locale, nationwide, or throughout the world. Alandmark represents a progressive step in the evolu-tion of mechanical engineering. Site designations

note an even or development of clear historicalimportance to mechanical engineers. Collectionsmark the contributions of a number of objects withspecial significance to the historical development ofmechanical engineering.

The ASM E H istory and Heritage Program illumi-nates our technological heritage and serves toencourage the preservation of the physical remainsof historically important works. I t provides an anno-

tated roster for engineers, students, educators, his-torians, and travelers, and helps establish persistentreminders of where we have been and where we aregoing along the divergent paths of discovery. Forfurther information, please contact the PublicInformation Department, The American Society ofM echanical Engineers, 345 East 47th Street, NewYork, NY 10017, 212-705-7740.

T he American Society of M echanical Engineers

Joseph A . Falcon, PE, President

Charles P. Howard, Vice President, Region IX

George I. Skoda, PE

Thomas D. Pestorius, Senior Vice President,Council on Public Affairs

Lorraine A, Kincaid, Vice President,Board on Public Information

David L . Belden, Executive Director

Lynden Davis, Director,Western Regional Office

T he ASM E National H istory and

H eritage C ommittee

Dr. Euan F.C. Somerscales, Chair

Robert M . Vogel, Secretary

Dr. Robert B. Gaither

Richard S. Hartenber, PE, Emeritus

R. M ichael H unt, PE

James L. L ee, PE

John H. L ienhard

Joseph van Overveen, PE

William J. Warren, PECarron Garvin-Donahue, Staff L iaison

Diane Kaylor, Public Information Staff

The ASME Hawaii Section

Chairman: John Yamamoto

Vice Chmn: Edmund Chang

Sec: M ark Stefanov

Treas: Larry Lamberth

H istory & Heritage: James Grogan


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Acknowledgements

The H awaii Secti on of the American Society of M echanicalEngineers gratefully acknowledges the efforts of all whocontributed to the designation of the Ginaca pineapple processing

machine as an I nt ernati onal H i st ori c M echani cal E ngineeri ngLandmark. A special thank you is extended to D ole Packaged FoodsCompany for their contributions in preparing this brochure and thedesignation ceremony. W e also thank M r. J. Farmer whose notes ofM arch 1966 were used extensively. We would also be remiss if we didnot acknowledge the literally thousands of people who worked thepineapple fields and in the process plants and their influence on thisland we call Hawaii .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Story of James DoleRichard Dole & Elizabeth Dole Porteus

Island Hert iage Publishing, Aiea, Hawaii, 1990

Fabulous Machine is Key to Pineapple IndustryAdvertiser CentennialJuly 1-7, 1956. Sec. II

Dole Packaged Foods CompanyM ichael G. Binder, President, Dole Packaged Foods Company - Asia

M ichael F. OBrien, Vice President and General M anager, D ole

Packaged Foods Company- H awaii DivisionGlenn F. Ball, Vice President M anufacturing, H awaii Division

Ki t J. McClure, Cannery M anager, H awaii Division

H istorical L andmark Planning C ommitteeGlenn F. Ball

James F. GroganRodney C. KimKit J. M cClure

Wayne M . PerreiraRussell R. Smith

Valerie H asegawa-Takahashi


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DOL E PACKAGED FOODS COM PANY

HONOLULU, HAWAII

H167

167 Ginaca Pineapple Processing Machine

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