Design and Experiment of a Laser Scoring Device for Camellia oleifera Fruits
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for Authors- In the abstract, in line 15, the first letter of “Defocusing distance” should be lowercase.
2 In the part 2.2.1 of the working principle, how to ensure that the laser cutting head is aligned with the fruit? Whether the laser beam is always irradiating during the whole process? If so, whether the energy consumption is relatively large. Therefore, further elaboration of the working principle is required.
- What measures or control methods are used to adjust or control the speed conveyor speed, laser power, and defocusing distance? The type and parameters of all the parts in Figure 2 used should be given. What controller and control strategy are used?
- whether the content in lines 170-171 is repeated with that of in lines 172-173?
- In Table 1, what is the theoretical foundation for the determination of the ranges of the three parameters (the speed conveyor speed, laser power, and defocusing distance)? In line 216, how to draw the conclusion of “the laser power should be maintained between 90 W and 110 W.”? In table 1, the range of the laser power is set as 90,100,110 W, Is there reason to suspect that other powers(such as 80,120W) are also feasible?
- Equation(5) is how to obtained and where is it cited? Why is there no ABC item?
- Because the shape and size of the Camellia oleifera fruits are different and difficult to maintain, the distance between the laser head and the fruit is dynamic. How to maintain a precise distance (defocusing distance) in the experiment. There is reason to doubt whether your data are given under the conditions you set and the generalizability of your results.
- Under what environmental conditions were the experimental data obtained?
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThank you for the opportunity to review the paper titled “Design and Experiment of a Laser Scoring Device for Camellia Oleifera Fruits” by Xinhan Luo et al. In this paper, the authors proposed and developed a laser scoring device to automate the production process of Camellia Oleifera fruits. To realize efficient laser scoring for scratching shells of fruits, experiments were conducted by varying three parameters: conveyor speed, laser power, and focal distance. Finally, the paper provided optimal parameters based on the experiment and achieved 85.6 % of the qualification rate.
Major comments:
1. Does the introduction provide sufficient background and include all relevant references?
- In line 20, the authors compared the proposed laser scoring device and the mechanical scoring device such as [20]. What are the qualification and damage rates of these devices?
2. Is the research design appropriate?
- Since the reviewer is not familiar with Camellia Oleifera fruit productions, there is some uncertainty regarding terminology. (e.g. notch vs. scratch, notch rate vs. qualification, damage rate vs. breakage rate).
3. Are the methods adequately described?
- The reviewer could not understand the intended meaning regarding Table 1 and Table 2. Table 1 shows the three levels of speed; 11, 13, and 15. However, Table 2 tested the speed at 10, 12, and 14. Moreover, based on Table 1, 27 conditions (= 3 speeds * 3 powers * 3 distances) should have been tested but only 17 cases are reported in Table 2. What were the conditions of the actual experiment?
- Also, the following information is missed: Laser power and defocusing distance in the experiment described in Fig. 6(a); Conveyor speed and defocusing distance in Fig. 6(b); Conveyor speed and laser power in Fig. 6(c).
4. Are the results clearly presented?
- The process shown in Fig. 8 is unclear to the reviewer. In the experiment, were only the ​qualified scored fruits moved to the next step of dehulling? Was the rest of the 14.4 % not used?
- In line 280, the authors stated the proposed laser scoring effectively improves the efficiency. To support this, the current pretreatment method and its dehulling and breakage rate should be provided.
5. Are the conclusions supported by the results?
- In the Discussion section, please discuss what an 85.6 % qualification rate means in the overall process. Is this value sufficient?
- The Conclusion section should contain future work of the study.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsNo extra comments.
Author Response
Thank you very much for your review and suggestions.
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsAll my questions were answered by the authors and reflected in the manuscript. The reviewer recommends that the authors insert definitions of the technical terms in Response 2 into your text before publishing for better understanding of readers. Also, please correct the reference source error on line 280.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
