Abstract
Manual peanut digging in the Philippines is still a practice due to the unavailability of low-cost mechanical diggers adaptable to local field conditions. Hence, the peanut digger design and evaluation were developed. The design involves benchmarking local field practices, ANSYS analysis of the digger blade, and CAD drawing. It is designed to dig, lift, convey, and drop the peanut stalk in a windrow. Its main parts are the main frame, digger blade, belt stalk conveyor, power transmission system, and hitching system. The pulling force and power requirement for the peanut digger is 1,387.48 N and 2.0 hp, respectively. The performance measures are the belt stalk conveyor speed levels at 205 rpm, 410 rpm, and 615 rpm, replicated three (3) times with three (3) plots per replication. They revealed an actual field capacity, digging efficiency, and mechanical physical damage of 0.025 ha/h, 95.31%, and 0.56%, respectively. Investing in the machine is economically viable with a benefit-cost ratio (BCR) of 2.09, a break-even point (BEP) of 5.33 ha/yr, and a payback period of 1.60 years. This implies that digging operations wider than 5.33 ha/yr start profit generation for farmers.
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