ARECANUT COLLECTING MACHINE BY BELT CONVEYOR MECHANISM

Punithkumar N.K, Nithin P.R, Oswald Titas Rodrigues, Sandeshkumar, Sandeep S

Abstract: Agriculture is now one of the most important sectors in the Indian economy. Areca nut Cultivation is one of the major livelihoods of farmers of Kerala and Karnataka. Labour Problems in every sector is leading to mechanization of processes. Agricultural sector is also facing such problem due to which most of the farmers tend to give up the practice. In order to further develop this sector technology has become one of the main components. Typically, dealing with the agriculture sector can entail difficulties relating to a number of factors. Consequently, to overcome such problems, farmers are being encouraged to adopt technology that suits their farm. Research has to be conducted for Areca nut collecting and bagging machine technology to understand more about the current scenario. To overcome the problems of an existing concepts like motorized, engine, solar and pedal operated the proposed design is best suitable for collecting and bagging the areca nut from ground togunny bag. Areca nut cultivation is a long process involving harvesting, moving the areca nut to ground, separating the fruits from bunches, drying, bagging, de-husking, separating. Several machines are being developed to help farmers to aid the aforementioned processes. Areca nut collecting and bagging machine is a new one among them. The machine is intended to collect areca nuts from ground directly to gunny bags fixed in a moveable trolley. After the bag is filled the trolley can also used to move the bags to store rooms. The machine is operated by a person so that farmer alone himself can use it. In addition, it can be used anytime. Another advantage of this machine is that after loading/filling the areca nut from ground to gunny bag and also weight indication is provided to check the weight. Since the machine is manually driven, the machine is ergonomically designed to reduce the user effort. The major enabling mechanism in the machine is rotary gear mechanism that pulls the areca nuts from ground. A belt driven Conveyer carries the collected areca nuts up into the bags

Keywords: Design and fabrication, bagging machine, Indian economy

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15623/ijret.2016.0521007