Design, Manufacture and Performance Evaluation of a Soybean Paddle Thresher with a Blower

Abstract

Soybeans threshing is traditionally done by hand beating with a wooden stick on a hard surface which is a drudgeries operation which leads to time-consuming, grain damage and grain loss due to shattering for small-scale farmers. Therefore, a soybeans manual thresher (Pedal operated) machine attached to a blower was designed, manufactured and its performance evaluated to help eradicate this problem by reducing labor, improve post-harvest, and increase income to small-scale farmers. The thresher consists of a hopper, drum, shaft on bearings, frame, beaters, blower, chain, and sprocket power transmission, pedal and seat. The thresher was fabricated with sheets and angle iron and the mechanism is based on a combination of impact, compression, and shear. Two levels of moisture content level were combined to evaluate the performance of thresher in terms of its capacity, threshing efficiency and percentage grain damage. The combination of dried and wet sample mixture at a feed rate of 25kg yielded maximum threshing capacity of 96 kg/hr, 98.6% maximum threshing efficiency and minimum percent grain damage of 3.5% results was recorded, which was very satisfactory.