CORN THRESHING MACHINE Machine Design 1

ABSTRACT

One-third of Filipino farmers or 1.8 million people, are depending on corn as their major
source of income and livelihood. Thus, corn is one of the leading agricultural products in the
Philippine. Corn threshing machine is popular both in farm and factory after they harvest corn
and it can thresh varies sizes corn. Unfortunately, a lot of penniless farm owners specially those
small or starting one are not able to purchase this machine. To address this undeniable problem,
this paper presents a study for a development of a corn threshing machine using design analysis
method. The main objective of the study is to design an improvised threshing machine which the
primary operation is to remove the corn grains or kernels and leaving the cobs intact. This study
would be made manifest and come into existence for the poor corn farmer to use and would
greatly help the farmers to lessen the amount of time, manpower, and their effort for them to be
more productive. This machine is composed of a barrel with 10.25 inches in diameter and 22
inches height which serves as the main frame of the machine. Inside the barrel is a 3.4 inches
shaft. Below the barrel is an outlet chute with 3.6 inches depth, 7 inches length, and 8 inches
width. Two discharging hole is provided for the kernel and cob. An estimated mass of the load
that be equal to 2.5kg is safety to put into a pillow block reaction.

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1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Study

Corn industry is substantially widening its range taking up to 55% of the agricultural
industry in the Philippines. It is the second most important food crop, after rice, in the
Philippines, with one-third of Filipino farmers, or 1.8 million people, depending on it as their
major source of income and livelihood. White corn or corn rice is the most important and most
preferable substitute staple in periods of rice shortage, especially for people in rural, far flung
areas. Corn is also the primary source of feed for the Philippines’ animal industry, and is being
increasingly used by the manufacturing sector. Farmers prefers to yield corn because it is easy to
grow, the demand of the crop is consequentially increasing and it is certainly has high market
cost. One of the necessary steps of processing corn is the threshing or deseeding of its kernel
from its cob. It is the process of the removal of its inner layers, seeds or kernels, leaving only the
cob or seed rack of the corn. In order to conduct this process a corn threshing machine is highly
needed.
Corn threshing machine is popular both in farm and factory after they harvest corn and it
can thresh varies sizes corn. This corn machine has small size and movable, light weight, but
high production yield, shelling clean with good kernels. The maize threshing machine can be
driven by diesel or electric motor. It is the most popular hammer throwing type equipment which
is the best sale in the market. The maize threshing machine shells the corn without breaking
kernels. The main structure of the maize threshing machine has stander frame, feeding hole,
rollers, discharging hole and so on.
Before such machines were developed, threshing was done by hand with flails: such hand
threshing was very laborious and time-consuming, taking about one-quarter of agricultural labor
by the 18th century. Mechanization of this process removed a substantial amount of drudgery
from farm labor. The first threshing machine was invented circa 1786 by the Scottish engineer
Andrew Meikle, and the subsequent adoption of such machines was one of the earlier examples
of the mechanization of agriculture. During the 19th century, threshers and mechanical reapers
and reaper-binders gradually became widespread and made grain production much less
laborious.

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1.2 Statement of the Problem

Most subsistence corn growers, usually from rural areas, are experiencing asperity in
threshing because the corn kernels when harvested are firmly attached to the hard cob, thus it
involves relatively high labor disbursement and promotes human stressfulness. Impecunious
farmer have acquainted these primitive and cumbersome method of deseeding the corn since
threshing machine are highly expensive. They tend to have an alternative strategy such as
manually shelling it by hand, picking off the kernels with their fingers by pressing on the grains
with the thumb. Other popular methods were the use of pestle and mortar; and beating by stick
technique conveyed for expelling corn portion from the cob. These methods became
unsatisfactory because of their low output, tediousness and their requirement of extra strength.

1.3 Objective of the Study

The main objective of the study is to design an improvised threshing machine which the
primary operation is to remove the corn grains or kernels and leaving the cobs intact. In
designing the corn threshing machine, the authors must aim to do the following in order to
achieve the objective:

 Conduct design analysis for the machine members

Design analysis is the systematic process of developing a design including all
information discovery and planning. This can be applied to any type of design including
the design of physical things such as machine, buildings and intangible things such as
software, information and processes.

 Calculate the required load exerted to the shaft if the power input is given
Load, in mechanics, is the external mechanical resistance against which a
machine, such as a motor or engine, acts. The load can often be expressed as a curve of
force versus speed. On the latter part, power is the rate of doing work or transferring heat,
the amount of energy transferred or converted per unit time. Having no direction, it is a
scalar quantity. It is necessary on this study that the load would be determined since the
power input is already given by the motor specification.

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 Provide a model using SolidWorks application

SolidWorks is a solid modeler, and utilizes a parametric feature-based approach
which was initially developed by PTC (Creo/Pro-Engineer) to create models and
assemblies. SolidWorks is a solid modeling computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-
aided engineering (CAE) computer program that runs on Microsoft Windows.
SolidWorks is published by Dassault Systèmes.

 Make a working prototype of the designed threshing machine

A prototype is an early sample, model, or release of a product built to test a
concept or process or to act as a thing to be replicated or learned from. A prototype is
generally used to evaluate a new design to enhance precision by system analysts and
users. Prototyping serves to provide specifications for a real, working system rather than
a theoretical one. In some design workflow models, creating a prototype is the step
between the formalization and the evaluation of an idea.

1.4 Significance of the Study

Being well-informed of the dilemma faced by the corn growers, an accompanying

conclusion is drawn; there is an indispensable need of a corn threshing machine that is easy to
avail and acquire by the rural farmers specially the penniless ones. The significance of this study
is to give aid to the agony and difficulty experienced by the subsistence farmers brought by their
cumbersome method of corn threshing. This project aims to replace their primitive way of
threshing into a more convenient and time efficient method. This machine would be made
manifest and come into existence for the poor corn farmer to use and would greatly help the
farmers to lessen the amount of time, manpower, and their effort for them to be more productive.

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1.5 Scope and Limitations

The study covers the selection of the materials that has the right properties for the
required variable to be solved, which is the load. This study is limited only on the motor’s power
or the power input since the load is what we are solving and power is given. The study is also
limited in mechanical works using comprehensive design analysis in dealing with accurate
measurement of the important parameters of machine members.

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2. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

In this chapter, a review of past research in the field has been compiled to enable better
understanding of the research work carried out in various regions, method of analysis on the
research subject.
The easiest traditional system for shelling maize is what we called as hand threshing. It is
done by pressing the thumbs on the grains in order to detach them from the ears. Another simple
and common shelling method is to rub two ears of maize against each other. These methods
require a lot of labor, however it is calculated that a worker can hand-shell only a few kilograms
an hour. Shelling of maize can be more efficiently accomplished by striking a bag full of ears or
heads with a stick. Maize and sunflowers can also be shelled by rubbing the ears or heads on a
rough surface. Small tools, often made by local artisans, are sometimes used to hand-shell maize.
With these tools, a worker can shell 8 to 15 kg of maize an hour.
Stuart Macdonald (1975) compares threshing as a basic to agriculture as agriculture was to
the national economy. K.S. Zakiuddin et al. (1969) said that the primitive threshing was done by
spreading the crop on a threshing floor where it is beaten either with sticks or flails (Fig.1) or
trampled by the hoofs of animals. The sheaves were made the grain in often threshed out by
beating the sheaves against shielded grates.
Hamid et al. (1980) reported about a laboratory corn sheller which was designed,
constructed, and tested to evaluate its ability to shell corn with little kernel damage. The sheller
consisted of three inclined rollers rotating in the same direction but at different speeds. The ears
were fed axially between the rollers through a guide. Damage and breakage tendency
comparisons at 18 percent kernel moisture content showed that the experimental sheller behaved
more like hand shelling than like a combine cylinder. The corn shelled by the experimental
sheller had significantly less damage than the corn shelled by the combine cylinder.
Harrington (1980) has designed a multi-crop thresher with spike tooth cylinder and inverted
bar type closed concave. He had stated that spike tooth concave helped to breakup bunches better
for more complete threshing and separation where as non-meshing spike tooth concave was only
practical in the inverted position where gravity provided continuous self-cleaning.

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Tanko Bako, Boman James Bature (2017) the average kernel shelling capacity and shelling
efficiency of the sheller was 22.06 kg/hr and 75.03% is better than the conventional finger palm
shelling method which has been reported to have 12.63 kg/hr average kernel shelling capacity
and 100% shelling efficiency.
Bautista, Castro, Cecili, and Baradi: Agricultural engineers of the Philippine Rice Research
Institute (PhilRice) developed a S–A two-in-one rice-corn farm machine called panicle thresher-
corn sheller (PT-CS), an improvement of an existing rice thresher with the addition of the
function of corn sheller. The machine is affordable, mobile, simple in design, and easy to operate
that even women can handle it. It is powered by a 3.73-kilowatt gasoline engine and made from
locally available materials.
Dr. A. Folarin Alonge and Babajide S. Kosemani (August 2011) designed, fabricated and
tested a threshing machine consists of the inlet, threshing unit, cleaning unit, and the outlet. The
inlet consists of the feeding tray inclined at 300 to the horizontal to ensure self-feeding .The
threshing is achieved through impact made by a fast moving spike on the pod. The concave -
cylinder clearance used is 0.06m while cleaning was done by the use of combined air blast and
sieve arrangements made to have its motion from an eccentric and also was made to be variable
in hole size.
Agulanna et al. designed a de-cobbing and separation machine of corn, fabricated and its
performance evaluated. The average feed and threshing rates were 2.06 and 1.65 kg/min with an
average threshing efficiency of 78.93 %. The average separation efficiency was 56.06 %. These
results indicate that threshing and separation can be performed out satisfactorily with the
designed machine and it can be used to process about 1 tonne of maize per nine-hour shift.
Many researchers had concluded that the variation of cylinder peripheral speed, effective
concave clearance, and fan speed were the major machine variables that could influence
threshing performance (Singh and Singh, 1981; Joshi, 1981; Ghaly, 1985 and Behera et al.,
1990).

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3. MATERIALS AND METHODOLOGY

3.1 Design requirement

The design requirement for this study is the load capacity for the operation on a given
motor power of 1/4 hp.

3.2 Conceptual Framework

The conceptual framework of the corn threshing machine is compose of a shaft that
rotates to separate its kernels from the cob.

Inlet

Threshing

Kernel Cob

Pail Outlet chute

Desired
product

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3.3 Design Calculation

Motor:

( )( ) ( )

( )

( )

( )( )
( ) For N to thresh the corn of must for 300-650
rpm

( )( )
( )

( )

Force to the shaft:

Ratio between driven pulley speed and

prime mover speed:

Where

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1” 34” 1”

Assume mass of shaft= 2kg

( )( )

; Therefore, this is the torque we need for ( )

shaft
Ss = F/A ; F = SsA

( )

( )( )

( )

Power delivered by shaft

= 16 9 . 61 17” / ”
Material properties assumed for shafting
R = 8246.6807 lbf
Cold-rolled steel

Therefore, the estimated mass of the shaft

that be equal to 2.5 is safety to put into a
pillow block reaction

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3.3 Bill of Materials

Material Price

Barrel P450.00

2 Pillow Block P270 X 2

2 Angle Bar (per length) P427.00 X 2

Shaft P333.00

Plain Sheet (Galvalume) P530.00

1 kg of nail P57.00

Welding Rod P137.00

Riveter and Rivets P230.00

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4. Results and Discussion

4.1 Proposed Design of the Threshing Machine

Side View Front View

Back view Top View

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4.2 Machine Parts

Name Size (in)

Height of Barrel 22

Diameter of Barrel 10.25

Angle Bar Length 24

Angle Bar Width 13

Shaft Length 3.4

Funnel Height 10.5

Funnel Width 9.5

Diameter Hole (for kernels) 1

Outlet Chute (Depth) 3.6

Outlet Chute (Length) 7

Outlet Chute (Width) 8

4.3 Actual Threshing Machine Developed

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4.4 Discussion

Shown on the figure and table presented above are the proposed design of the machine
which is modeled using solid works application and detailed machine parts provided by its
dimensions. Also the actual machine developed is presented which is made by the design
analysis conducted where its members are from the dimensions calculated. The machine is
designed to utilize the load capacity for the operation on a given motor power of 1/4 hp. It is
indicated the test for these machine will be manifested on the proceeding term as a completion for
Machine Design 2.

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5. Conclusion

The machine has been successfully designed for convenience and continuous operation
considering threshing corn and discharging process. The corn threshing machine designed by the
authors has the potential to promote portable corn thresher for small scale farmers specially for
those who are from far flung areas. This machine had made manifest and came into existence for
the poor corn farmer to use and would greatly help the farmers to lessen the amount of time,
manpower, and their effort for them to be more productive. This machine is made to function and
fabricated with the most economical materials possible available in the market. It is small in size
which is very ideal for small scale corn growers, simple design and proven effective. The machine
is expected to have high efficiency which will be tested in the proceeding term of this course.The
recommendation that can be made to improve this machine is that increasing the length of the
corrugated bars that will have the perfect fit of the average cob size.

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