DESIGN, FABRICATION AND PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF MOTORIZED HOLE DIGGER FOR PERENNIAL CROP TRANSPLANTATION

Abstract

Ethiopian smallholder farmers are confronting a shortage of farm machinery for growing perennial crops. They are still employing old conventional farm hand equipment and human force to make holes for planting perennial crop seedlings. However this kind of farming is exceedingly tedious, time-consuming and labor-intensive and resulted in extremely low production and productivity. Therefore, this study was conducted to improve production and productivity those farmer’s and make attractive perennial crop farming environment by developing a hole digger for perennial crop production. In this study a motorized hole digger was designed, fabricated and evaluated for its performance. To evaluate the digging performance of the digger, an experiment with full factorial design at three replications was conducted on sandy and clay soil at different soil moisture content and working speed. The digger was tested on clay and sandy soils separately at soil moisture content of (15.00, 22.00 and 29.00%) and working speed of (100.00, 150.00 and 180.00 rpm). The result of the test revealed that the maximum digging capacity and efficiency of the digger were 45.00, 43.33 hole/hr and 85.00%, 84.67% observed at working speed of 180.00 rpm and soil moisture content of 29.00 % for hole dug on sandy and clay soil respectively at depth of 40.00cm and 35.00 cm diameter. The highest fuel consumption of 0.68 L/hr was observed when the soil moisture content was 15.0% and at working speed of180.00 rpm on clay soil. Generally, the study was successful in designing, fabricating, and testing a motorized hole digger prototype. The performance evaluation result showed that the digger's digging capacity and efficiency were greatly increased by raising the working speed from 100.00 to 180.00 rpm and the soil moisture content from 15.00 to 29.00%.