Structural Design And Mechanism Analysis Of Oil Palm Harvester

Wong, Michelle Khai Shing (2017) Structural Design And Mechanism Analysis Of Oil Palm Harvester. Project Report. UTeM, Melaka, Malaysia. (Submitted)

Text (24 Pages) Structural Design And Mechanism Analysis Of Oil Palm Harvester.pdf - Submitted Version Download (319kB)

Abstract

Plantation of oil palm becomes focus in Malaysia as it is the top contributors of the economy. In order to match the supply of oil palm fruit with demand, different harvesting methods and tools are used in oil palm estate such as the motorized cutter named Cantas. Although it can reduce the harvesting time and the number of labors involved in harvesting process, the tight arrangement of oil palm fronds and long manually adjusted harvesting pole may cause the inconvenient to the labors. Therefore, this project studies the design of a circular cutter and automatically adjusted telescopic pole with rotational mechanism. It is designed onto an oil palm harvester so that it can reach the oil palm tree with maximum height of 4m. This project is done according to the product development process in designing a product. The concept development of harvester is based on the scientific study on the limitations, customer requirement and engineering characteristics of existing harvesters. It is followed with the selection of best design of harvester that can solve the problems that faced by labors in existing harvester. Different analysis and calculations are also carried out in term of rotational speed, deflection and bending moment for different components in the oil palm harvester. After the selection of suitable materials and dimensions for each component, the design of harvester is done with the aid of CAD software in form of part detail design, orthographic view and exploded view. The automatically adjustable telescopic pole is designed in this project to replace the manually adjusted harvesting pole. Besides, the vibration method in vertical direction that used in the sickle of existing harvester is replaced by circular cutter with rotational harvesting mechanism.The17cm diameter of inclined teeth circular cutter with rotational mechanism and 3.7m maximum length of telescopic pole with automatically controlled are designed in this project and it could facilitate the harvesting process. With the rotational cutting mechanism, the harvester is not restricted by reaching constraints which was experienced in conventional harvesters. Labors no longer need to find the suitable position to insert the sickle in the middle of fronds with tight arrangement, they can easily reach and harvest the oil palm FFB from the bottom of the bunches with the support of automatically controlled telescopic pole.

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