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4WD Oil Palm FFB Collector-Transporter

Fresh Fruit Bunch Picker MRK II is a completely integrated, self-contained, one-man and once-over operation machine system designed for in-field collection, transportation and direct unloading of collected oil palm fresh fruit bunches into the roadside mainline transport truck.  This 4 wheel hydrostatic drive machine runs on 30 KW @ 2200 rpm KUBOTA V2203-E 4 cylinders diesel engine equipped with a 81.4 lpm @ 1000 rpm VICKERS TA 1919 main hydrostatics pump and a 54.9 lpm @ 1000 rpm SAMHYDRAULIC HIC55 driving motor.  Its overall configuration is made up of the main chassis and driving unit, collection assembly, operator cab, scissors lift-type fruit bin and associated hydraulic system.  The system offers an output capacity of 22.7 metric tons per day and the collection –transportation cost of RM4.52 for every metric ton.  An expected cost saving of RM1.13 for every metric ton of fresh fruit bunches can be obtained with this new system over commonly used Mini Tractor-trailer with Grabber.

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Trailed Type Tree Crop Seedling Bagging Machine

This tractor seed-bagging machine is equipped with steerable front wheels and a goose neck towing arm for easy movements under limited working space at the nursery.  The machine is capable for mechanized filling of soil in the seed bag and ergonomically designed to reduce the fatigue of workers for the soil bagging operation at the nursery. The main system consists of the main chassis, soil hopper, soil agitator, screw feeder auger, screw deliver auger, a special made trolley with detachable trays. The soil hopper could accommodate 1.5 tons of soil and has an wide top opening for easy loading by a normal standard a tractor with front-end loader. Two operators are required for the machine system; an operator to fill the seed bag with soil and placing the soil filled seed bag on the two tray at his sides and an operator to collect all available seed bags on the trays and transport the ready prepared seed bags on a wheel barrow to a nearby seedbed in the nursery.  The machine overall projected capacity is 529 bags per day, an improvement of about 14.5% over the present manual method for filling activity. It field capacity is expected to be much higher once the operator had acquired the necessary skill to complete the soil filling task effectively and efficiently.

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New Integrated Mechanization System for Oil Palm Plantations

A new integrated mechanization system is to be introduced for the oil palm plantation industry in Malaysia.  The system consists of a four-wheeled drive multi purpose prime mover that is equipped with the respective attachments for conducting various tree crop field operations in both hilly and undulating terrains.  The prime mover is a single chassis unit with a hydrostatic drive, oscillating drive axles and low ground traction tires. A diesel engine of 50.5 kW (67.7 HP) with rated speed of 2600 rpm is used to drive the main hydrostatic pump having a displacement of 46 cc/rev at a continuous pressure of 210 bar. The pump then runs two hydraulic motors having a displacement of 245 cc/rev at a continuous pressure of 205 bar with either series and parallel connection options to provide the required torque and speed at drive wheels of the prime mover.  Proper prime mover wheelbase and ground clearance height have been employed to give better stability and maneuverability to the prime mover for the typical plantation terrain conditions.  Mounting provisions for the seedling transplanting, fertilizer application, spraying application and the infield fruit collection-transportation were made on the prime mover.  The available implement attachments have been designed to have a payload capacity of 20 seedlings for field transplanting of tree seedlings, 600 kg load for crop fertilizing, 450-liter tank capacity for crop spraying, and 1500 kg load for the infield fresh fruit bunches (FFB) collection-transportation.

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UPM Indoor Tire Traction Testing Facility

UPM tire traction testing facility was designed and developed to spearhead fundamental research on traction mechanics with high-lug agricultural tires on tropical soils.  This available facility consists of a moving carriage with a cantilever-mounted tire that moves in either forward or reverse directions on rails well above a soil tank.  The present facility set-up was able to run under either towing test mode for tire motion resistance studies or driving test mode for tire net traction and tractive efficiency studies. The test tire on the moving carriage under towing test mode was made to rotate and engage onto the soil surface in the tank through a chain drive system.  Where else under driving test mode, the test tire on the moving carriage was powered to rotate by a motor and a gearbox system with an additional pull provided by a cable-pulley mechanism connected to a tower with hanging dead weights.  All controls on the moving carriage were activated from the main control console.  Respective transducers were positioned at various localities within interfaced to a data acquisition system to measure tire horizontal and vertical forces, sinkage, tire speed and motion carriage speed.  The data acquisition system was able in real time to receive the measured signals, display on the monitor screen and record into its CPU storage memory.

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FILTRAP System for Tractor-Implement

FILTRAP is an integrated and complete system on-board a 64 kW @ 2200 rpm MF3060 Massey Ferguson agricultural tractor for thorough testing and evaluation of any implements under actual conditions.  The system can measure, display and record in real-time tractor’s pitch and roll angles, theoretical travel speed, actual travel speed, fuel consumption rate, drive wheel slippage, drive wheel torque and implement’s plowing depth, PTO torque, drawbar force, and three-point hitch forces.  With the added DGPS option, the system can be used for spatial mapping of the tractor-implement’s geo-position in the field with respect to its measured performances.

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FILCOMP System for Rice Combine Harvester

FILCOMB is an integrated and complete system on-board a 5 m wide, 168 kW @ 2100 rpm New Holland TC56 Rice Combine Harvester capable of measuring, displaying and recording in real-time at every at every one second interval the harvested crop yield, threshed grain moisture content and temperature, and machine field performances.   Among the measured machine field performances include cutting height, cutting width, actual traveled speeds (from radar sensor and satellite), theoretical speed, pitch and roll angles, fuel consumption, drive shaft torque, track slippage, field capacity and field efficiency.  Maps of the harvested crop yield and machine operating parameters could be later generated from the available stored data in the system to visually indicate the site-specific variations of the measured attributes within the field plots and at the same time correlating these spatial variations with the variations of other measured attributes.  These maps could provide detail information which parts of the field that gives the better crop yield and better machine performances as the result from the harvesting operation.

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Tractor Mounted  Soil Penetrometer-Shearometer

This automated soil penetrometer-shearometer is able to measure in situ soil penetration resistance and shear strength for the purpose of quantifying terrain trafficability.  The complete unit is equipped with a three-point hitch attachment for its rear mounting on to a tractor. The penetrometer measurement range is 0 to 10 Mpa while for the shearometer is 500 to 600 kgcm. The motion controls for the penetrometer and shearometer are performed through a Programmable Logic Controller unit.  Stepper motors are used to drive the penetrometer and shearometer moving carriages in the vertical axis direction and to drive the rotating spindle of the shearometer.  DEWE-2010 PC data acquisition system has been used to perform both the operational controls of the penetrometer-shearometer and the logging of the soil penetration resistance and shear stress measurements at a fixed soil depth, and also tractor’s position from the differential global positioning system.

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Trailed Type Soil Surface Profile Digitizer

This automated, trailed type 2-axis laser soil surface profile digitizer is able to generate a DEM of a surface profile at a sampling point in a field , and at the same time able to quantify its equivalent roughness degree.  The construction of the digitizer consists of two main parts; the measurement apparatus and a special design trailer.  The measurement apparatus provides the non-contact surface digitizer mechanism and the special design hydraulically power open-based trailer is used for transporting, uplifting  and releasing the measurement apparatus during field operation.  The maximum digitizing area is 1.05 m X 1.8 m and both the digitizing speed and interval are selectable to suit the required operation time and output resolution.  The employed methodology of measuring the soil surface profile is very precise, reliable, fast and user friendly.