Design and Analysis of Cutting Mechanism for Crop Harvester

Abstract

Harvesting is the main part in agricultural automation. The use of crop cutting technology in
developing countries to reduce the merchandise cost which will be result in monetary
development of agricultural production. This project tends to provide the design and
development of cutting mechanism and crop collecting mechanism used for crop harvester
machine. The current situation in our country the traditional use of harvesting mechanism is
more tedious, time consuming and not able to develop the agricultural sector of the low
farmers in economic. Developed cutting mechanism in this project has two sets of blade
which cut the crop in a scissoring type of motion. A simple crank and slotted lever
mechanism used to provide reciprocating action to cutting blades. The stalks are cut with the
impact and shear forces at the linear velocity by cutting blades. This system has a crop
collecting mechanism guiding the whole-stalk to one side of machine to stop being crushed
under tires and for easy collection. Experimental and Finite element analysis showed that
cutting blades had a significant effect on maximum cutting energy and cutting energy
required to cut a crop. This demonstrates that Reciprocating blades have better cutting force
and energy consumption reduction performance than ordinary rotary blades.