Design and fabrication of an animal drawn onion harvester.

Abstract

Manual harvesting of onions is the commonly practiced of harvesting in Uganda. This is rigorous and time consuming. It is associated with back pain and hurting of fingers. This work is dominantly done by women and children. The method does not cope up with large scale and hence the need to design and fabricate an animal drawn onion harvester, This report is structured in five chapters: to well report the in production to the study, literature review methodologies and methods followed during the design, results obtained after testing the prototype, and recommendations and conclusions. This report contains methods that were used to design each component of the fabricated onion harvester, their dimensions and how their -respective material of made were selected. The report also presents methods of fabrication that were used to come up with the harvester. This report also includes field results obtained during testing of the machine. The designed and fabricated animal drawn onion harvester has a digging rate of 1.82kg per minute and harvesting efficiency of 85.97 0% with a pay-back period of 1.5years. The topic under study was limited to designing of the animal drawn onion harvester and fabrication of the prototype. This machine is limited to areas that grow red grail variety of onions and soils that are light. It is also limited to areas that use animal traction. The study also covered testing of the efficiency of the animal drawn onion harvester. The purpose of the study was to design and fabricate an animal onion harvester aimed at reducing drudgery during harvesting onions, time wasting and compromising on the quality of onions. Furthermore, to reduce on costs incurred in labour. At the end of the study, the cost for employing a labor force, during harvesting of onions was reduced by using animal drawn onion harvester for digging and lifting onions off the ground to a collecting unit. The work which was meant be done manually by many people ended up being done by few people which took shorter period. Improving onion harvesting by using an animal drawn onion harvester is also expected to increase onion production in Uganda and this will improve many standards of living of people and income.