To Design and Fabricate a Mechanized Palm Oil Fruit Bunches Loading Truck - a Prototype

Tan, Kar Keong (2016) To Design and Fabricate a Mechanized Palm Oil Fruit Bunches Loading Truck - a Prototype. Final Year Project (Bachelor), Tunku Abdul Rahman University College.

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Abstract

Palm oil originates come from West Africa. It grown in tropical rainforest country which is mainly in the Malaysia and Indonesia. In the Malaysia palm oil estate, the palm oil fruit bunches production can be more than one million tons in every year. In plantation industry, being flexible and capable of responding rapidly to market demand is the key to making a profit. Throughout the whole harvesting process, the most time consuming is the manually loading process by the worker to load the palm oil fruit bunches to the truck. Normally worker spent 3 to 4 hours to fully load a 3 tons truck. There is a problem which no many people, if the palm oil fruit bunches explore to the sunlight for a long period of time, for example a few hours. The sunlight will cause fruit bunches losing it content which is losing its weight. Therefore, it will cause loss of money. There are stages in doing this prototype. First, to study the human manual loading process, study the structure of the truck and to study the availability of mechanized loading in the market. After that, design the prototype using the Solidwork and using the 3D printer to print out the customise parts. Purchase, printing, assembly, and programming the microcontroller is the most important part. Finally go to test run for the prototype. The main idea of doing this prototype here is to replace the manually loading part by the worker to load the palm oil fruit bunches to the truck. The prototype of the proposed mechanised system for palm oil fruit bunches loading to a truck is successfully designed, built and functionality tested. The proposed three degrees of freedom loading mechanism would greatly reduce loading mechanism would greatly reduce labour involvement in fruit bunches loading. Therefore, keep the palm oil contents losses to the lowest level.