Design, Fabrication and Performance of Drudgery Free Paddy Thresher For Farmers Of Hills of Himalayas

Abstract

Paddy threshing by manually operated paddy thresher is popular among the farmers since more than 60 percent of the cultivated land in hill area is under the category of small and marginal farmers in India. In manual beating operation the operator had to sit in a bent position, which was ergonomically not appropriate for long-time operation, since wrong posture may cause serious injury. Hence need was felt to design and develop a small motorized thresher especially for hill region which should be user friendly and more efficient New developed thresher was a low cost motorized machine for threshing paddy crops. The machine runs on ½ hp and operated by an electric motor. Due to the mechanical process, drum speed increased and it reduced the energy expenditure and threshing time of the users. Optimization process was carried out using design software. On this basis, a new motorized paddy threshing unit, having a height 755 mm, time 5.1 minutes and load density 1 ½ kg gives production.i.e. 16.69 kg with 9.6 kj/min energy expenditure, and 299 beats Tccw, 127 beats/ min. heart rate, 20.94 per cent MSD and 20.86 per cent RPE and overall desirabillty were found to be .73 percent.