Design and Fabrication of Soil Sifting Machine for Value Added in The Black Ginger Herbal Production

Abstract

The soil sifting machine was designed and built to remove soil from harvested black ginger before processing or selling. The small and micro community enterprises are involved in the design and building procedure, including resolving the problems and improvements to the soil sifting machine. As a result, the soil sifting machine was fully functioning and fulfilled the needs of small and micro community enterprises. The machine consists of two main important parts, which are the power transmission and the sifting part. The test run was powered by a 1/4-horsepower motor, using 50 kilograms of black ginger each time at 16, 32, and 50 revolutions per minute. The result showed that the machine sifted the soil out of 750 kilograms of black ginger per hour at 16 revolutions per minute, which was its best performance. After sifting, the black ginger batch was not fractured, but there was a little bit of soil stuck between their rootstocks and some of their fibrous roots fell off. The soil sifting machine of the black ginger worked 18.75 times better than human work. The specific power consumption ratio was 1.27 baht per hour, resulting in a 90 percent efficiency and a 20-day payback period..