DEVELOPMENT A MACHINE FOR PICKING CALENDULA INFLORESCENCES TO SUIT THE SMALL HOLDING FARMERS

Abstract

The experiments were carried out at Tamiya, Fayom, Egypt for developing a Calendula inflorescence picking machine suit to the small holding farmers. The machine was consisted of a cutting head and knapsack air vacuum unit. The cutting head was equipped with two saw discs rotating underneath calibration fingers. These fingers were used to measure the correct flowering stem length before cutting. Three types of cutting saw discs (plan,50teeth, and 100 teeth) were used at five disc speeds of 2.78,4.17,5.56,6.97, and 8.34 m/s to determine the optimum disc type and disc cutting speed that fitful a higher ratio of correct cutting stem length. Also, the same procedures were made with the optimum disc linear speed 6.97 m/s, and 100 teeth discs with fingers lengths of (125mm,150mm,175mm, and 200mm) at three fingers angles (0 o,10 o, and 20 o). The results indicated that the optimum parameters were at 6.97 m/s disc linear speed, 100 teeth discs type, 150 mm finger length, and finger angle 10o that gave average percentage of a correct stem cut length 93.31 %. The machine productivity at the optimum parameters was 0.0576 Mg/h from freshly cut flower gave 0.01973 Mg/h dried flowers. The total operating costs were 33.07 EGP/h. The machine indicated NPV of 2747.24 EGP at 14 % interest rate, and payback period 1.28 year with rental price 60 EGP/h. The cost of one Megagram of dry crop harvested by the machine was 1676.51EGP/Mg against 7785.89EGP/Mg of the crop collected by hand.