Design and development of power tiller operated multipurpose whole stick harvester especially for sugarcane

Abstract

In Sri Lanka cane harvesting is done manually using various types of hand knives. This method ofharvesting not only consumes much time but also requires much skilled labourers. But nowadayslabourers are becoming scarce and costly, particularly in sugarcane cultivation areas. This is due todiversion oflabour to other more remunerative work in industry, construction, business and diversionof labour to other crops.

It is difficult to employ heavy machines in Sri Lanka due to various reasons such as, fragmented andsmall holdings with small and irregular fields, diverse cropping patterns followed, the cultivation practices which have been developed for manual harvest and poor farmers who cannot afford costly machines.Therefore Power tiller operated whole stick harvester prototype was designed and constructed. Thedesigned machine consists of reversible cutting device, power transmission unit with clutch mechanismand Cane shifting device. The Maximum cutting width, Machine capacity and Traveling speed wereconsidered as criteria for comparison of merits and demerits with existing manual method. The resultsshowed that maximum cutting width, Machine capacity and Traveling speed were 1.2m, 0.8 ha/dayand 0.75 km/hr respectively. The cost of production of the designed Sugarcane harvester wasRs.20,OOO.00