DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF AN ENHANCED MOTORIZED MAIZE THRESHER MACHINE WITH BAGGING UNIT
The processing of agricultural product into quality forms prolongs the useful life and also increases the net profit of these products. The development of the enhanced motorized maize thresher was done with the aim of improving the production and reduction of drudgery involved in manual packing and bagging of the threshed maize seed by the introduction of screw auger conveyor. The machine consists of the hopper with extension, threshing unit, cleaning unit, screw auger conveyor and power unit. The machine performance evaluation on three different varieties of maize (Sammaz 14 (W), TZEE-W Pop STR and ACR 97 (Y)) gives the threshing capacity of 650 kg/hr, Threshing efficiency of 70.3% at a drum speed of 860 rpm and moisture content of 12.15%. Percentages threshed, and unthreshed was 76.38% and 15.30% respectively. The comparison test with the existing thresher shows that the developed thresher threshes and bags a total of 100 kg of maize in 3 minute and 38 seconds against 6 minutes manual packing and bagging. The time difference shows 65.14% reduction in the time of threshing and bagging operation. The developed maize thresher gives improvement on the timeliness of threshing operation due to the reduction in the time of bagging. It is recommended that further work on automation of the feeding of maize cobs into the machine and stitching the bags should be carried out for the improvement of the machine productivity.
Authors : Kabri, H.U., Ebegbodi, M. and Tashiwa, Y.I.
Category : Open Access Volume (Issue) : 8(2) Date Uploaded : 28th January 2023