Incense sticks made from the bamboo are the major raw materials used in the Agarbatti industry. India is the largest producer of Incense stick in the world and it is mostly being manufactured by tribal people in interior part of North-Eastern states like (like Tripura, Assam, Mizoram etc) who make strips and sticks by conventional methods of using knives which is very tedious, time consuming and risky. Electricity operated high capacity machines are only suitable and affordable by industries but not useful for individual rural poor who are making sticks at their home because they do not have access to electricity.
The innovator has developed a manual operated machine which can slice bamboo strips as well as convert the strips into sticks. One needs to load the thick bamboo piece and slide the cutter to and fro through the handle. This results 1.2 mm thin slices of bamboo. Those slices are collected and at a time about 50 slices are fed vertically. The cutter is again moved to and fro resulting splints of 1.2 mm width and thickness at a time. An average person can make about 5000 splints per hour.
