LIFTING MECHANISM FOR ATTACHMENTS OF AGRICULTURAL EQUIPMENTS

Neil Purandare, Ashish Shejwal, Hrishikesh Sane, Siddharth Patil

Abstract: In the field of agriculture numerous equipments are used for various purposes. These attachments like plough, harrow, chisel plough, cultipacker, etc are mounted on the operating machine through an attachment which is then lifted as per requirement with the help of a hydraulic mechanism. No matter how efficient a mechanism might be, cost has always been and will be an important factor to decide which lifting mechanism to opt for. Hydraulic mechanism being costly, this newly designed mechanism is one of the cheapest amongst all others in the market. The main objective of the design has been coping for the high cost and bulky nature of hydraulic mechanisms to meet the attachment lifting requirements of the hand operated light weight machinery. Relative sliding motion of wedges is used for lifting of load. The wedges are actuated by a power screw. Our mechanism is designed by keeping in mind the light weight attachments like plough, supreme, ultimus, etc of a power tiller. Though it can be used in agricultural machines involving lifting of various attachments with necessary changes in dimensions of our prescribed design. The same mechanism can be used for lifting action of other heavy weight attachments of heavy duty machines. One of the primary objective of the design has been to substantially reduce the cost and size of the existing mechanism. Box dimension of our design is comparatively much less than other designs available in the market. This reduction in cost makes the mechanism affordable for farmers of every class. For commercialization other electronic actuating mechanisms can be used with the basic design structure remaining the same. It was observed that of all components bell crank is the most critical component, which was successfully analyzed for the required load.

Keywords: bell crank, holder, wedges, base, actuating mechanism, plough, C40, lowering action, lifting action

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15623/ijret.2014.0308053