Development of Modified Wheat Straw Reaper by Using Cad Software

Wheat is largely cultivated crop in India. It produces large amount of wheat straw which is a major livestock feed source. Improved mechanization introduced straw reaper which harvest the large amount of wheat straw and convert it into bhusa. The bhusa is then fed to the animals. But it has been reported that straw reaper harvested bhusa has poor quality in terms of dirt content as compared to thresher. Thus, there is a need to refine the existing straw reaper with sieving mechanism which separates the dirt and improves the quality of bhusa. Computer aided design of conceptual machine was made by using “CATIA” software. This design helps to find out the appropriate dimensions and gives better representation of machine to fabricator. The improved machine was evaluated at three feed rate (14, 16.5 and 19 q/h), three cylinder speed (28.45, 32.25 and 36.04 m/s) and two concave bar spacing (10 and 14 mm). The performance of developed machine has evaluated on the basis of fuel consumption, power requirement and separation percentage of dust from bruised straw. During experiment it was observed that at 14 mm concave bar spacing and 28.45 m/s cylinder speed, power requirement and fuel consumption was found to be 16.01 kW and 5.27 l/h respectively when the feed rate was 14 q/h. It was observed that the improved machine was able to remove considerable dust and dirt from bruised straw.