Development of a Reciprocating Weeding Machine for Cottage Crop Production

Abstract

Weeding is currently still carried out manually in Nigeria and some of the African countries. This is despite the  efforts that have been made to develop different types of weeding machines in Nigeria with different drive mechanisms, features and designs.  Up to this point, no model or design have been commercialized but they remain in the prototype stage partly due  to sophistication, poor quality and low efficiency. In this study, a prototype of motorised weeding machine, actuated by a reciprocating mechanism was designed and fabricated for use on most subsistent crops plots.   The reciprocation prevented the need to move the blades back and front as this action is automatically achieved in one process.The design features included 20^o rake angle of the cutting blade, a working depth of 2.54cm and 28cm  width of cut. Dimensions and the thickness of blades were designed according to the principles of  general soil mechanics. Other machine elements were designed following PSG TECH procedures. After fabrication and assembly, the machine was tested on a 10m 10m plot planted with maize and test result indicated a functional efficiency of 98%, quality performance efficiency of 82.7% and field capacity of 0.036m²/s as against 0.01m²/s with manual weeding. The material for the construction was sourced from locally available materials.The weeding machine has an effective cutting width of 27.5 cm and a production cost of NGN 175, 000.00.