Design And Fabrication Of A Maize Harvesting Machine

ABSTRACT

This work is on a maize harvester. The main purpose of our Project is to help small scale farmers who having land area less than 5 acres by designing small scale harvester machine to harvest grains very efficiently. Our project work will focus on ease of harvesting operation to the small scale farmers for harvesting varieties of maize in less time and at low cost by considering different factors such as cost of equipment, ease of operation, time of operation and climatic conditions. This machine has cutting blades which cut crops in scissoring type of operation can cut up to two rows of maize. The power unit for this machine is Petrol engine of 14.25 HP. This power is transmitted through gear box, sprocket-chain mechanism to the cutter blades and other power requiring mechanisms for performing cutting, harvesting, and separation operation. This harvester might be the best solution for the problems faced by small scale farmers relating with availability of labors and cost of harvesting.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

COVER PAGE

TITLE PAGE

APPROVAL PAGE

DEDICATION

ACKNOWELDGEMENT

ABSTRACT

CHAPTER ONE

1.0         INTRODUCTION

1.1         BACKGROUND OF THE PROJECT

• PROBLEM STATEMENT
• AIM AND OBJECTIVE OF THE PROJECT
• ADVANTAGES OF THE PROJECT
• LIMITATION OF THE PROJECT
• METHODOLOGY

CHAPTER TWO

2.0         LITERATURE REVIEW

• AN OVERVIEW OF MAIZE
• CORN HARVESTER
• REVIEW OF THE STUDY
• CONVENTIONAL HARVESTING PROCESS

CHAPTER THREE

3.0     METHODOLOGY

3.1      INTRODUCTION

3.2     THE MACHINE COMPONENTS

3.3      CALCULATION

3.4      WORKING PRINCIPLE

CHAPTER FOUR

TEST AND RESULT

• CONSTRUCTION PROCEDURE AND TESTING ANALYSIS
• ASSEMBLING OF SECTIONS
• RESULT
• PERFORMANCE TEST

CHAPTER FIVE

• CONCLUSION
• REFERENCES

CHAPTER ONE

1.0                                          INTRODUCTION

1.1                            BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Recently farmers have seen a shortage of skilled labour available for agriculture. Because of this shortage, the farmers have transitioned to using harvesters. Maize harvesting is one of the most important filed operations of maize production. As the accelerating development of maize industry, mechanized maize harvesting is widely accepted and used by farmers in the world.

These harvesters are available for purchase but they are not affordable, because of their high costs. However, agriculture groups make these available for rent on an hourly basis. But the small holding farm owners generally do not require the full-featured combine harvesters. Also, these combine harvesters are not available in all parts of rural farmers due to financial or transportation reasons.

Thus, there is requirement of a compact and efficient combine harvester which would be more accessible and also considerably cheaper. The mission is to create a portable, user-friendly and low cost mini harvester. The idea was to create a machine which is cheap and will reduce the labour required to harvest crops. This machine has the capability and the economic value for fulfilling the needs of farmers having small land holdings.

In conventional harvesting process, the crop is cut manually by labour and then this crop is get threshed by Thresher. It takes time and it is not effective as they can work only 5-6 hours in a day. Even though the small scale farmers who having land less than 5 acres, it takes two to three days to cut and harvest the crops. After plantation of crops, if proper care is not taken then non-required plants also grows with crop. So, to separate this unwanted plant while harvesting is tedious work. From past few years, government and private sector working together to overcome the problem occurring in conventional process. Aim of our project is to reduce the labour of farmers and thereby increase the speed and quantity of harvested maize.

1.2                                   PROBLEM STATEMENT

Traditionally, harvesting process of maize is done manually by labour and it consumes time and at the same time wastes maize. The purpose of mechanized maize harvesting is to replace manual labor to harvest maize from fields in time with minimum loss while maintaining high quality.

1.3                                     AIM AND OBJECTIVE

Aim of this project is to design and develop small scale low cost compact harvester which reduce the overall cost of maize harvesting in the form of labour cost and harvesting cost.

The specific objectives of the work were:

1. To design, construct, and test a low-cost maize harvesting machine,
2. To evaluate the efficiency of the maize machine,

• To use the maize machine in establishing an agro-processing centre for rural farmers.

1. To provide proper utilization of wastage this is useful for cattle.
2. To reduce overall harvesting time as that of traditional harvesting time.

1.4                          ADVANTAGES OF THE PROJECT

The idea was to create a machine which is cheap and will reduce the labour required to harvest maize. This machine has the capability and the economic value for fulfilling the needs of farmers having small land holdings.

1.5                            LIMITATION OF THE PROJECT

These harvesters are available for purchase but they are not affordable, because of their high costs. It also have a high maintenance cost. It uses petrol to operate which can also become too difficult for a poor farmer to purchase.

1.6                                         METHODOLOGY

As the requirement for grains is increasing day by day, therefore the target was to create the machine which is affordable to each and every farmer, which is cheaper, efficient and will reduce the total harvesting cost.

To achieve this aim, it is decided to follow the following steps:

• To understand farmer’s problem which they are facing about harvesting, for this it is decided to interview the farmers. So as decided we surveyed the farmers who are having land less than 5
• Design of small scale