Evaluation of Quick Covering Machine for Grain Drying Pavement

บทคัดย่อ

In sundrying the quality of the grains are greatly reduced when paddy grains were caught by the rain unsacked and unstored resulting to reduced profit. The objectives of this study were to design and fabricate a quick covering machine for grain drying pavement to test and evaluate the operating characteristics of the machine according to its deployment speed, recovery speed, deployment time, recovery time, power consumption, aesthetics of laminated sack and to conduct partial budget and cost curve analysis. The performance of the machine was determined using Complete Randomized Design (CRD) with three replicates under two operations. The three treatments were T₁-32 tooth, T₂-34 tooth and T₃-40 tooth auxiliary sprockets and the two operations were deployment and recovery. Results revealed that the machine was able to cover the grains in a 12.8 m x 22.5 m grain drying pavement at an average time of 17.13 s using a 40-tooth auxiliary sprocket with aesthetic value of 96%. It consumed 0.53 W-h for the deployment and recovery of the cover. The machine entailed an investment cost of $1,344.40 and an annual cost charge of $647.32. Moreover, the savings per year using the quick covering machine was $101.83.