Abstract:
This project work focuses on the design and fabrication of animal driven manually operated, plow mounted single-row cup-belt potato planter includes one or more planting units with an endless conveyor. A plurality of cups is attached to the conveyor and each cup receives a potato seed travels upwardly between upper and lower sprockets. This potato planter that is cheap, easily affordable by the rural farmers, easy to maintain, and less laborious to use. The planter has the capability of delivering the seed potato in to the cultivated land that too in particular row prepared precisely with uniform distance between each seed and also with uniform spacing between the rows. The machine consists of mainly digger, potato seed container, fertilizer container, two sets of roller chain sprockets, and a set two disc-harrows. This project work is formulated with the objective to produce quality potato of paddy through scientific methods and adapting suitable processing methods through development of potato planting machine. The work presents theoretical aspects regarding the kinematics and dynamics of the potato planting machine; It is very simple to operate and farmers can easily handle. Visual inspection of the seeds that were released from the planter’s chain drive mechanisms show that there are no visible signs of damage. The Planter capacity observed from trial is average theoretical field capacity is 0.0277 ha/hr, actual effective field capacity 0.04764 ha/hr, and field efficiency was 75.3%. Overall performance of the applicator was found quite satisfactory. The design in this project is done at different aspect of design analysis such as geometric analysis, strength analysis, and detailed design with manufacturing process and cost estimation.