Design and Fabricate the Prototype of a Motorized Cutter for Harvesting Palm Fruit (original) (raw)
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Development of a support mechanism for the use of motorized oil palm fruit bunch cutter
In this study a support mechanism (SP) for a palm fruit bunch harvester was designed, fabricated and tested on a plantation. This was with a view to adapting the cutter for harvesting tall oil palm trees in Nigeria. The design concept for the support mechanism was conceived as a mast pyramid which simulates an adjustable ladder pivoted on wheels comprising three segments, namely: the wheels which facilitate easy movement within the plantation; the lower segment, which comprises the stands and the upper segment which comprises the chamber (equipped with a platform) in which the operator (the climber) stands. The support mechanism was tested in comparison with the existing rope-and-knife (RK) method. The harvesting parameters used are time to climb up the palm (TU); time to cut (TC); time to come down from the palm (TD); number of bunches harvested (NB) and total time of harvest (T). A regression analysis was carried out on the data collected using Statistical Analysis Software (SAS) package. The result shows that using the support mechanism for the motorized bunch cutter was easier than rope and knife (RK). The average time of harvest T, TU, TD, and TC per tree, for the SP and RK are 190 s and 391 s; 21 s and 152 s; 21 s and 103 s; and 147 s and 134 s, respectively. The total time of harvest for RK is over 100% more than the time of harvest for SP. The time of harvest per hectare for SP and RK are approximately 9 h/ha and 20 h/ha, respectively. The comparison of SP and RK shows that there is a significant difference in TU, TD, NB, T, but there was no difference in TC, (p < 0.05). The study concluded that the support mechanism shows promise in enhancing the use of the motorized bunch cutter for tall palms and hence should be adopted.
Development of an automatic cutting system for harvesting oil palm fresh fruit bunch (FFB)
AFRICAN JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL RESEEARCH, 2012
The purpose of this project was to design, fabricate and test a harvesting mechanism for oil palm fresh fruit bunches (FFB). A carrier machine was designed and fabricated which can move around the tree trunk smoothly while carrying the cutting system. A mechanize motor system also was designed and assembled on the carrier machine for moving the cutting machine forward and backward along the tree trunk radius. For a successful and smooth cutting process, two direct current (DC) motors were used for carrier machine. Cutting machine consists of a mechanism for cutting and a cutting blade. A reciprocating mechanism was used in this project because of the added advantages of this method as compared to others. Design of the blade tooth for doing a fast and clean cut was an important parameter in this project. An HM-TR Transparent Wireless Data Link Module and an ATmega8 microcontroller were used to control the cutting system. This system was tested successfully in both laboratory and field condition.
2015
In this study the performance of a motorized palm fruit bunch harvester (MBH) was evaluated in comparison with the bamboo-pole-and-knife harvester (BPK). The MBH was first tested on Nigerian plantations for the palm trees it could reach. The average time taken to harvest a bunch and the time taken per hectare of plantation were determined. The best orientation and the cutting angle for the harvester were also determined. The exact height which the harvester could reach was also determined on the plantations. The harvester was later used in comparison with (BPK) method on palms of moderate height and the average time of harvest per bunch, field capacity, as well as cost of operation was determined for the two methods. Time study (TS) of the two methods was also carried out. The result showed that MBH could harvest between the height of 2.5 m and 4.5 m of palm conveniently. The average time of harvest per tree and speed of harvest for MBH and BPK were 98.86 s and 66 bunches/h; and 166.93 s and 40 bunches/h, respectively. This shows that time of harvest for motorized harvester is over 60% lower, and the speed of harvest is over 50% higher than bamboo pole and knife. The time of harvest per hectare for both MBH and BPK are approximately 4 h/ha and 7 h/ha, respectively. The rate of fuel consumption was estimated to be 1.03 L/h. Moreover, the cost of operation for MBH and BPK was estimated to be ₦ 10,223.46 and ₦ 16,950 per hectare, respectively. The cost of operation using the BPK is over 60 per cent more than that of the MBH. Statistical analysis of the effect of time of harvest on methods indicated that the effect was significant (p < 0.05). The study concluded that motorized oil palm bunch cutter can effectively and efficiently handle palms of moderate height in Nigerian oil palm plantations and performed better than the bamboo pole and knife.
Development of a young coconut fruit trimming machine
Journal of food engineering, 2007
A project was initiated to design, construct, test, and evaluate a prototype young coconut trimming machine. The purpose of the design was to trim most of the outer husk so that the coconut looked attractive and could easily be cut open. The prototype was based on the lathe cutting machine mechanism and was composed of a lathe machine with a body-trimming knife, a shoulder-trimming knife, a base cutting knife, and clamping mechanisms. In operation, the body knife first pared the midsection of the fruit. Following this, the shoulder-knife trimmed the top to form a conical shape, and finally the base cutting knife sliced the bottom of the fruit to form a flat underside. In this study, the key design parameters and their optimum settings were determined. The angle between the cutting edge of the body knife and the Y-axis perpendicular to the rotating axis of the fruit (X-axis) was 76°; the angle between the cutting edge of the shoulder-knife and the X-axis was 56°; and the knife angle between the knife and the XY-plane was 61°. The rotating speed of the fruitwhich was newly harvested -was 300 rpm. Based on these design parameters, a commercial prototype was manufactured and tested. This prototype has the capacity to trim 21 fruit/h, with the finished product on average containing 1.1% of untrimmed green area and 0.2% of fibrous area. The trimmed fruit were accepted by fruit traders and exporters.
Development of a Low Cost Motorized Oil Palm Fruit Bunch Stripper
Oil palm is an economic plant with great importance because of its revenue generation capacity. The major bottleneck in the oil palm fruit processing in Nigeria especially in the small scale oil palm processing industries is the stripping of oil palm fruits from their bunches and most of palm fruit processors are low income earners who might not be able to afford the existing palm fruit bunch stripper due to their high cost. A low cost motorized stripper was developed in order to overcome this challenge. The components of the stripper which consist of a power source, the stripping unit housing, the speed gear and shaft, the stripping unit, fruit and bunch outlets and the supporting frame were fabricated using locally sourced materials.The stripper was tested to evaluate its performance efficiency. Freshly harvested palm fruit bunches at different fermentation time of 24, 36, 48, 60 and 72 hours was used. High fruit stripping efficiency of 98.8% was recorded at fermentation time of 72 hours and lowest of 72.84% at fermentation time of 24 hours. It has clean fruit recovery efficiency of 98.57% at 60 hours fermentation and lowest average value of 93.83% at 24 hours fermentation. The highest average value of output capacity 358.77 kg/h at 72 hours and lowest of 202.29 kg/h at 24 hours fermentation time. These results showed that the stripper will be able to handle up to two tons of oil palm fruit bunches in a day at 72 hours fermentation; thus, making it affordable for the small and medium scale oil palm fruit processing industries in Nigeria at a low cost of purchase and maintenance.
An Improved Pole-and-Knife Method of Harvesting Oil Palms
2000
A modified pole-and-and-knife (MPK) method of harvesting oil palms was designed and fabricated. The method was tested along with two existing methods, namely the bamboo pole-and-knife (BPK) and the single rope-and-cutlass (SRC) methods. Test results showed that the MPK method was superior to the other methods in reducing the time spent in searching for and collecting scattered loose fruits (and
Selection of a Cutting Mechanism and Optimization of Parameters for Coconut Harvesting Drone
Agricultural Science Digest, Volume 43 Issue 3: 382-389 (June 2023)
Background: Coconut (Cocos nucifera L.) palm is an important cash crop in India and third-largest producer of coconut in the world. In general, the skilled workers climb to harvest the coconuts from the tree without any safety device. The coconut trees are very tall and injuries associated with coconut tree climbing, particularly falling from coconut trees is common in coconut plantations. In order to rectify the problem, an appropriate cutting system needs to be developed. Hence the characterizing physical and mechanical properties viz., peduncle thickness, width, shape, size, moisture content, density and also the cutting blade characteristics, were studied. Methods: The observed characteristics were used for the effective design of the cutting module. The cutting blades were selected for the investigation viz, circular saw blade and saw tooth blade. The parameters selected for the investigation are cutting speed (S) at three levels (500, 700 and 900 rpm), the inclination angle of the blade () five levels (30, 45, 60, 75 and 90), type of the blades (B) (regular tooth and ripped tooth pitch) and thickness of peduncle (T) three levels (30, 40 and 50 rpm). Similarly for chain saw, the velocity of cutting speed (S) at three levels (500, 700 and 900 rpm), the inclination angle of blade () at three levels (45, 60 and 90) and thickness of peduncle (T) three levels (30, 40 and 50 mm) were selected for the experiments. Result: The optimization of the selected levels of variables was done to achieve best performance to select the cutting speed, cutting angle and type of blade. The results showed that circular saw blades with irregular tooth pitch have higher cutting efficiency than circular saw blades with regular tooth pitch. It was found that cutting time increases linearly with decreasing cutting speed. It was observed that chainsaw gives better cut quality with minimum cutting time than saw blades.
Conceptual Development of Automated Harvester for Tall Oil Palm Tree
Advances in Agricultural and Food Research Journal, 2020
Innovation and invention in field mechanization for oil palm sector has created a variety of advancement in technology. The change in oil palm operation to mechanization will overcome the problem of labour shortage occurrence in oil palm sector. The problem occurs in harvesting tall oil palm is the height of oil palm that causes difficulty to cut the fresh fruit bunch by using manual labour. Moreover, the use of automated harvester also will make the harvesting operation easier without the requirement of skilled labour and ensuring labour safety. The automated harvester has advantages and disadvantages that need to be improved in meeting the oil palm requirement. This study overviews the mechanization that are used in harvesting tall oil palm. This research project has resulted in the development of high technology mechanization based on previously developed machine for harvesting fresh fruit bunches (FFB) at 10 meter and above of oil palm age tress. However, the previous developed ...
Mechanization in Oil Palm Harvesting
International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences
Harvesting is an important process in oil palm plantation main objective of harvesting is to get fresh fruit bunches with excellent oil content and quality and can get the maximum profit. During harvesting the worker need mechanization to assist in collection of oil palm bunches. Currently there is many types of technological or mechanized tools for aiding the harvesting of palm oil. This paper is to grasp detail understanding on the history of mechanization used in oil palm plantation specifically for harvesting in Malaysia. For the traditional and manual method, wheelbarrow is only the best mechanization in assisted collection of oil palm bunches. It is because wheelbarrow can pass through all types of road surface, the gradient of slope, and type of soil. Wheelbarrow is a machine that is easy to work with and does not give pollution to environment. However wheelbarrow use more energy of worker to pull the wheelbarrow with full capacity. To reduce the use of worker energy, buffalo cart are used to replace the wheelbarrow. Buffalo cart can help to do human work by pulling the cart that full fill with oil palm bunch. Beside can reduce the use of energy, it can reduce the cost of worker and can make the time more short in harvesting system. After that, mechanization assisted in harvesting system is improve by using engine that is mechanical buffalo (Badang and Rhyno). Mechanical buffalo can help human work in plantation sector to more faster. Mechanical buffalo also can reduce the labour cost and can increase the productivity of worker.