Design and Development of an Experimental Cotton Picking Aid: Part I

摘要

An experimental cotton picking aid was designed and developed for picking cotton from cotton bolls. In order to generate required suction pressure on the boll, a suitable blower size was selected based on the minimum force required to pick the boll. This force was theoretically computed as 3.6 N for picker end diameter of 25 mm. A suitable cyclone separator was designed for collecting the bolls. For the selected air flow rate of 0.076 m~3/s through the cyclone, area of inlet duct, exit pipe along with the inlet and exit velocity through the cyclone were also computed at an air velocity of 15 m/s (through suction pipe). An electro magnet was designed to increase the picking rate. The minimum current required to operate the electro-magnetic valve was computed as 4.26 A. Losses in the system like friction losses and pressure losses at various sections of the developed machine were also computed in order to find out the total pressure loss. The total pressure loss was computed as 111.7 mm of H_2O. Finally, a prototype of the machine was developed and tested according to theoretical design computations. The power and fuel consumption of the developed prototype was also measured.