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30 66 1 SM
30 66 1 SM
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All content following this page was uploaded by Joel Nwaeze Nwakaire on 17 September 2015.
Abstract
The processing of agricultural product into quality forms not only prolongs the
useful life of these products but also increases the net profit farmers make from
such products. In this work, emphasis was place on demand led design which
involved understanding the need of the farmer and designing an appropriate sys-
tem that meets that need. The objectives of the work were to design, construct,
and evaluate a low cost maize sheller for rural farmers in Nigeria. The methods
used involved the collection of farmers opinion on their sheller needs, selecting
appropriate materials, and utilization of theories of failure that enable the deter-
mination of allowable shear stress on the bearing supports. The communication
methods used were an interactive sessions with farmers especially the women and
children, in other to determine their shelling problems. Comparison was made
between the human performance index for shelling and the machine performance
index. The human mechanical efficiency, through-put capacity and grain handing
capacity are 45%, 26.67kg/hr and 21.1kg/hr at a biomaterial test weight of 20kg
with actual shelled weight of 15.8kg at a shelling time 45 minutes. For machine in-
dices, through-put capacity and the grain handing capacity of the sheller are 86%,
119.76kg/hr and 109.99kg/hr respectively. The price difference shows a drastic
reduction in the purchase price of maize thresher by N 32,500.00 ( 216.67), which
represent 56.52% price reduction. Market days were also used as an opportunity
to show the farmers and agro-processors the advantage of using the maize sheller.
Keywords: thresher, performance Analysis, design, rural dweller
Appendix
Figure 4: An orthographic view of the pulley.