Design and Development of an Engine-Operated Weeding Machine for Wheat Farm

Abstract

Weeds constitute a serious problem to wheat crops and cause a great loss to the yield. Manual weeding is labor-intensive and time-consuming. Chemical weed control has a negative impact on both the environment and humans. To overcome these problems, an engine-operated weeder was designed and developed at Asella Agricultural Engineering Research Center (AAERC). The developed weeder was designed on the basis of agronomic and machine parameters. The developed prototype weeder consists of the mainframe, weeder blade, ground wheel, and power transmission system. The rated engine speed of 2800 rpm was reduced to 46 rpm of the ground wheels by using bevel gear, chain, and sprocket mechanism in three stages. The overall dimension of prototype weeder was 1650 mm in length, 800 mm in width and 1050 mm in height. The total production cost of the engine-operated weeder was 11,409.92 ETB. This paper is focused on machine design analysis and fabrication of prototype. Performance evaluation of propototype would be addressed in the next coming paper.