Design, Development and Performance Evaluation of Weeding Machine

The developed prototype weeding machine consisted of the mainframe, weeder blade, ground wheel, and power transmission system. The rated engine speed of 2800 rpm was reduced to 46 rpm of the ground wheels by using bevel gear, chain, and sprocket mechanism in three stages. The performance of the machine was evaluated in terms of weeding efficiency, plant damage, effective field capacity, field efficiency, fuel consumption, performance index, and, energy consumption. The experimental design was a randomized complete block design with three weeder forward speeds two depths of operation, and three levels of soil moisture content. The performance of the weeder was found to be optimum at 15.25 percent soil moisture content with 0 to 40 mm depth of operation at a forward speed of 1.5 km/hr. The results revealed that maximum weeding efficiency of 90.1 percent was obtained with lower plant damage of 3.31percent whereas the effective field capacity, field efficiency, fuel consumption, performance index, and energy consumption were found to be 0.052 ha/hr, 85.99%, 0.41 l/hr, 276.78 ha/hp, and 481.71 MJ/ha, respectively.