Design and fabrication of a bulk paddy sampling equipment

O. Muhamad Isa

Abstract

In paddy procurement transaction at the rice mill, fast and accurate quality determination process of the paddy is needed so that farmers are quickly and fairly paid for their produce. In the case of bulk paddy delivered by truck, it is necessary that representative samples over depth of bulk paddy are taken first at predetermine locations. Then these paddy samples are mixed uniformly and reduced to proper size for use in grading exercise. The existing short length hand type probe commonly used to sample sack paddy is unsuitable for taking representative samples throughout the depth of the bulk paddy. Even the probe can be made longer, but it requires a great effort to insert throughout the bulk paddy.An equipment for quick sampling of bulk paddy in local truck size was designed and fabricated. It was designed for deep sampling of the bulk paddy at the centre and four corner locations of the truck. The amount of paddy sample was 2.5 kg with the overall time taken 2–3 minutes depending on the operator skill. Part of the development work on this equipment was concentrated on designing and testing of the microprocessor based controller to automate the sampling operation of the bulk paddy on the truck. Subsequently a motorised paddy mixer capable of producing uniform and proper weight of paddy sample for grading had also been designed. The device could produce uniform paddy sample by setting its mixing time to 99 seconds with the motor speed of 140 rpm. 

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