Development of a New Striker for a Portable Coffee Harvesting Tool
Moreno Cárdenas, E.L.; Oliveros Tascón, C.E.; Alfonso Carvajal, O.A.; Álvarez Mejía, F.
Revista Facultad Nacional de Agronomía, Medellín 66(2): 7071-7083
2013
ISSN/ISBN: 0304-2847
Accession: 070529209
Rotary beaters were designed, built and evaluated for use in a portable coffee harvesting tool. The present study was carried out in three phases. In the first phase, preliminary tests were conducted to determine the performance of three rotary beaters. In the second, eleven experimental rotary beater models of various forms were built and evaluated based on the results of phase one, determining the detaching capacity, selectivity, branch damage, fruit dispersion and rotor balance for each one. The analysis was performed using a decision matrix with three qualifying levels (high, medium and low), which resulted in one beater with the best performance. In the third phase, this beater's design was refined using CAD for future evaluations. The deformations and maximum experimental stresses were below the maximum permissible values for the material used in the beater's construction.