VL paddy thresher
The light weight pedal operated paddy thresher (VL Paddy thresher) was designed and developed at VPKAS, Almora, Uttrakhand, India. The machine was developed for hill conditions of North Western Himalayan Region, where the drudgery caused by the weight of the machine is a major concern. To overcome this, polycarbonate sheet was introduced to reduce the weight, vibration and noise level of the machine. The machine performance was evaluated for optimal design parameters viz., wire loop spacing (38.6 mm), wire loop tip height (61.50 mm) and threshing drum speed (440 m/min) for maximum threshing capacity (64.6 kg/h against predicted 66.7 kg/h) and threshing efficiency (96.4 % against predicted 98.3 %) for paddy variety Thapa Chini. The machine parameters set for highest threshing performance were further tested for four other hill varieties of rice namely VL-61, China-4, VL-62 and VL-85. Test results indicated that the machine performance was varying with rice verities and shown best performance with rice variety VL-61 (TC=100.9 kg/h, TE=98.7 %) followed by VL-85 (97.4 kg/h, 98.5 %), China-4 (70.9 kg/h, 96.2 %), VL-62 (62 kg/h, 97.2 %) and Thapa Chini (64.6 kg/h, 96.4 %). The power requirement for operating the thresher is 1 man or women working continuously for 1 hr, without feeling fatigue.
Self propelled ferti seed drill:
A double row self propelled seed-cum-fertilizer drill (Vivek seed-cum-fertilizer drill; cost INR 8000/, sowing capacity 6 nali/h) suitable for sowing rice, wheat and lentil has been developed at Vivekananda Institute of Hill Agriculture , Almora, India. The machine was fabricated using locally available materials
Low cost, light weight small steaming unit for barnyard millet
Low cost light weight steaming plants (Three prototypes a, b and c), for steaming of barnyard millet, have been developed at experimental farm, Hawalbagh of Vivekananda Parvatiya Krishi Anusandhan Sansthan, Almora (Plate 13). In preliminary trials steaming plant ‘C’ was found best as compared to ‘A’ and ‘B’
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1. |
Diameter of steaming drum, mm |
610 |
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2. |
Height of steaming drum, mm |
914 |
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3. |
Height of sieve from the bottom, mm |
460 |
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4. |
Size of sieve opening (l×b), mm |
20×1.8 (Rectangular) |
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5. |
Height of top cover , mm |
50 |
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6. |
Height of steam outlet, mm |
20 |
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7. |
Outer diameter of steam outlet, mm |
30 |
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8. |
Internal diameter of steam outlet, mm |
20 |
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9. |
Material outlet height, mm |
200 |
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10. |
Material outlet width, mm |
200 |
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11. |
Weight, kg |
65 |
Engine operated millet thresher cum perler
An engine based millet thresher cum pearler was also developed at experimental field, Hawalbagh of Vivekanand Parvatiya Krishi Anusandhn Sansthan, Almora. The developed thresher cum pearler was found suitable for threshing, dehusking and pearling of millets such as Finger millet and Barnyard millet with the use of different sieves of various opening size.
