DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION OF CORN THRESHER MACHINE USING LOCALLY SOURCED MATERIALS

Abstract

Corn is one of the most important crops and it has a source of a large number of industrial products besides its use as human food and animal feed. Every part of Corn has economic value as the grain, leaves, main crop stalk, tassel and cob can all be used to produce a large variety of food and non-food products. After harvesting with sickle and plucking of cob manually, dehusking of cob is done by hand to remove its outer sheath and further grain is obtained by threshing and shelling the cob traditionally, i.e. by beating the dehusked cobs with sticks or with fingers or sickle, etc. To overcome this problem of removing its outer sheath and dehusking the cobs this machine was developed. The machine basically compromises of separate shelling chamber, threshing chamber, collecting tray and motor (1.0HP). The arrangement of these parts is connected by belt and pulley mechanism. The weight was only 95 Kg. After testing the machine, the production rate for threshing operation was 300 kg/hr and for shelling 300 kg/hr. At last the germination test was carried out for corn seeds threshed by the machine and it were found that time required to grow from seed was about 48 hours. It was discovered that the threshing machine is very efficiency and effective.