Manually Operated Coconut Dehusking Machine for Rural Agriculturist

Abstract

Dehusking of coconut is the major work after harvesting the coconut from the coconut plant. In existing manual dehusking methods available equipment’s causes injury to the personal [1]. Also, it gives husk, which is important material for coir processing industry. Considering the drawbacks of electrical/hydraulic dehusking methods such as power requirement, high initial cost etc., and manual coconut dehusker has been developed and the machine has a provision to dehusk all sizes of nuts. The major parts of manually operated coconut dehusker are blades, L- rod, disc lever, table, spring. Dehusking table is provided with three set of teeth’s, which are opened and closed when operated with bottom disc plate. The teeth are placed 120 degree with each other in circular arrangement to accommodate the all sizes of coconuts. One set of fixed blades are welded to table and another set of three triangular shaped moving or opening teeth attached to end of the L-rods. The L-rods pivoted to disc plate at the bottom, when pushing the disc plate with operator leg that opens and penetrate the husk and pulls it away from the coconut. The dehusker is of extremely robust construction with a bare minimum of moving parts. In this work highest emphasis has been given to safety operation with time proven. The machine has been tested for its efficiency, from the results it has been observed that, very a smaller number of rejections i.e. 97 percent good dehusked coconuts were obtained. A common operator can dehusk approximately 100 coconuts per hour without any assistance.