Ergonomic Design of a Drumstick Plucker

Abstract

India is the largest producer of Moringa tree’s pod referred to as ‘drumstick’ in the world. Harvesting of this commercially valuable farm produce is a delicate process due to constraints such as height of plant, judgmental visibility in selective plucking, and damage to the drumstick during the harvesting, long working hours and uncomfortable posture of harvester. At present, most of the farmers are using locally made, non-ergonomically developed tools. These self-made harvesting tools are an essential cause for low economic returns to farmers from drumstick farming due to the high percentage harvesting of immature pods by non-selective plucking. Until date several studies have been conducted to develop a drumstick plucker. These drumstick harvesters need large shearing force of 5 to 15 N for harvesting single drumstick or cutter pipe requiring twisting force to harvest. Both these ways are not feasible to apply on commercial basis as it may develop musculoskeletal disorders in long run. In order to avoid the harvesting loss due to non-selective plucking and health related issues; there is a need to design suitable harvesting tools. Therefore, to address the above mentioned issues, a conceptual model of selective drumstick plucker was developed through Solidworks which was then converted to a full scale prototype for simulation study in the field.