Design and construction of a motorized fish feed pelleting machine for small scale farmers.

Abstract

Fish is a vital source of food and a major supplier of animal protein consumed by the world's population. As the world population increases there is a demand for fish which has led to increase in artificial production of fish in ponds and cages as. a means of meeting part of this. demand. However, this has hardly been achieved in Uganda as-most of the rural fish farmers find it hard to access the right feeds from the. commercial manufacturers who are mostly in faraway towns, making the feeding inappropriate as most of them feed the fish using the feeds meant for poultry; This has contributed to serious problems of increasing fish prices, poor quality flesh and low maturity rates. and low yields from the industry. Hence there is need to construct a motorized fish: feed pelleting machine for small scale. farmers to increase the availability and accessibility of fish feeds. In this project work, the design and fabrication of fish feed pelleting machine was carried out with the view to encourage local technology as most of the machines available are not easily accessible. This project discusses the local design and fabrication of a motorized fish feed pelleting machine. During the. design of the machine, the machine components were designed by putting up some assumptions and analysing forces acting on them, this led to selection of equations to.be used in the design. After designing, the components were fabricated from selected materials and assembled together. The pelleting machine uses-a worn shaft propelling. the feed mix through the die. The worm shaft is enclosed in the auger casing and is propelled. by an electric motor with the aid of belt and pulleys. This auger is fed by a hopper, which is able to hold 6kg of the feed mix at a time. A cutting blade is mounted on the shaft which. cuts the pellet as it comes out from the die. The pelleting machine was tested to have the following results; pelleting efficiency and capacity as 90% and 41kg/h. The pelleting machine has an initial cost of UGX 828,500 and a payback period of 4 years. The investment seems viable as the payback period can drastically reduce if the machine is hired out to other farmers.