<p style="text-align: justify">This paper presents design, analysis, manufacturing, and prototyping of an electric pollen extractor. The design project was based on a request from the Washington State Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to build a machine for extracting pollen from tree catkins. The machine designed at a low cost can shake off pollen from catkins cleaner and faster than other devices. After observing the existing pollen shakers in the market, the authors have found that high efficiency pollen extractors are overpriced, while the other somewhat affordable ones are made with low efficiency material making them hard to recover after each operation. The farmers need a cost-effective pollen shaking machine that can clean seeds, extract pollen, and help make storing pollen easier than ever. Based on feedback from the customers who are interested in buying an electric pollen extractor that is affordable, efficient, and fast to recover after each use, a few key factors are considered for designing and prototyping the presented electric pollen extractor. The extractor can shake the pollen and clean the seeds faster by assembling a 6-volt DC gearbox motor, a drive wheel to stabilize the rotation of the tumbler, and a vibrator to help shaking the pollen during the filtration process. Therefore, the collection and storage of pollen is a successful way to solve the problem of inconsistency in the pollination of male and female flowers. Specifically, the extractor consists of a box and a hollow tube inside the box. The tube is wrapped with mesh filter and powered by a DC gearbox motor and can have rotating tumble motion inside the box for extracting pollen. After design idea was modeled in Autodesk Inventor and safety-factor-based design calculations were carried out, mechatronic circuits were designed and further CFD and FEA simulations were performed in Ansys to understand extracting process and validate CAD design respectively. Some adjustments were made to check the required type of motion. The rotational speed of the tumbler was selected based on the required motion for particles. Stronger material was selected for the tumbler for easy clean. After completion of the preliminary analysis, the design changes required another round of testing. The first round of testing produced a positive change, eliminating some material, and lowering cost. Second round showed promising results with speeding up extraction time. Final design, prototype and successful testing results of the extractor is presented in the paper with concluding remarks and future work.</p>

Design and Prototype of an Electric Pollen Extractor

Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/IMECE/IMECE2021/volume/85543

ASME 2021 International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (IMECE2021)

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