International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics
Volume 116 No. 19 2017, 509-514
ISSN: 1311-8080 (printed version); ISSN: 1314-3395 (on-line version)
url: http://www.ijpam.eu
Special Issue
DESIGN AND FABRICATION OF AGRICULTURAL CULTIVATOR
1
Golden Renjith Nimal, R.J, 2M.Ajmal Ali Khan
1
Asst Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Bharath University, BIHER, Chennai-73.
2
UG Student, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Bharath University, BIHER, Chennai-7
1
goldenrenjithnimal.mech@bharathuniv.ac.in
1. Introduction
A developing country like India is expected to continue
to rely more on hand tools for the foreseeable future for
cultivation. The use of hand tools for land cultivation is
still predominant in India because draft animals and
tractors require resources that many Indian farmers do
not have easy access to. The need for agricultural
mechanization in India must therefore be assessed with a
deeper understanding of the small holder farmer’s
activities and what values farm power generated for
them.
As our population continues to increase, it is
necessary that we must produce more food, but this can
only be achieved through some level of mechanization.
Manual method of seed planting, results in low seed
placement, spacing efficiencies and serious back ache for
the farmer which limits the size of field that can be
planted. However, planting machine or planter that is
normally required to produce more food is beyond the
buying capacity of small holder farmers
These small holder farmers still continue to plant
manually, the result of which is low productivity of the
crops. It is therefore necessary to develop a low cost
planter that will reduce tedium and drudgery and enable
small holder farmer to produce more foods and also
environmental friendly. [11]
In the past, various types of design have been
developed with different design approaches which have
their advantages and disadvantages and also operational
limitations.[12]
2. History
The basic idea of soil scratching for weed control is
ancient and was done with hoes or mattocks for millennia
before cultivators were developed. Cultivators were
originally drawn[13] by draft animals (such as horses,
mules, or oxen) or were pushed or drawn by people. In
modern commercial agriculture, the amount of
cultivating done for weed control has been greatly
reduced via use of herbicides instead.[7] However,
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herbicides are not always desirable—for example,
in organic farming.[15]
The powered rotary hoe was invented by Arthur
Clifford Howard who, in 1912, began experimenting with
rotary tillage on his father's farm at Gilgandra, New
South Wales, Australia. Initially using his father's steam
tractor engine as a power source, he found that ground
could be mechanically tilled without soil-packing
occurring, as was the case with normal ploughing. His
earliest designs threw the tilled soil sideways, until he
improved his invention by designing an L-shaped blade
mounted on widely spaced flanges fixed to a small-
diameter rotor. With fellow apprentice Everard
McCleary, he established a company to make his
machine, but plans were interrupted by World War I. In
1919 Howard returned to Australia and resumed his
design work, patenting a design with 5 rotary hoe
cultivator blades and an internal combustion engine in
1920.
In March 1922, Howard formed the company Austral
Auto Cultivators Pty Ltd, which later became known as
Howard Auto Cultivators. It was based in North mead, a
suburb of Sydney, from 1927. [14]
Meanwhile, in North America during the
1910s, tractors were evolving away from traction engine-
sized monsters toward smaller, lighter, more affordable
machines. The Fordson tractor especially had made
tractors affordable and practical for small and
medium family farms for the first time in history.
Cultivating was somewhat of an afterthought in the
Fordson's design, which reflected the fact that even just
bringing practical motorized tractive power alone to this
market segment was in itself a milestone. This left an
opportunity for others to pursue better motorized
cultivating. Between 1915 and 1920, various inventors
and farm implement companies experimented with a
class of machines referred to as motor cultivators, which
were simply modified horse-drawn shank-type cultivators
with motors added for self-propulsion. This class of
machines found limited market success. But by
1921 International Harvester had combined motorized
cultivating with the other tasks of tractors (tractive power
 International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics
and belt work) to create the Farmall, the general-purpose
tractor tailored to cultivating that basically invented the
category of row-crop tractors [27-30].
In Australia, by the 1930s, Howard was finding it
increasingly difficult to meet a growing worldwide
demand for exports of his machines. He travelled to
the United Kingdom, founding the company Rotary Hoes
Ltd in East Horndon, Essex, in July 1938. Branches of
this new company subsequently opened in the United
States of America, South Africa, Germany, France, Italy,
Spain, Brazil, Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand. It
later became the holding company for Howard Rotavator
Co. Ltd. The Howard Group of companies was acquired
by the Danish Thrige Agro Group in 1985, and in
December 2000 the Howard Group became a member of
Kongskilde Industries of Soroe, Denmark.[8]
When herbicidal weed control was first
widely commercialized in the 1950s and [6]1960s, it
played into that era's optimistic worldview in which
sciences such as chemistry would usher in a new age of
modernity that would leave old-fashioned practices (such
as weed control via cultivators) in the dustbin of history.
Thus herbicidal weed control was adopted very widely,
and in some cases too heavily and hastily. In subsequent
decades, people overcame this initial imbalance and came
to realize that herbicidal weed control has limitations
and externalities, and it must be managed intelligently. It
is still widely used, and probably will continue to be
indispensable to affordable food production worldwide
for the foreseeable future; but its wise management
includes seeking alternate methods, such as the
traditional standby of mechanical cultivation, where
practical.
Figure 1.1. 1949 Farmall C with C-254-A two-row
cultivator
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Figure 1.2. A cultivator pulled by a tractor in Canada in
1943
2.1 Different types of agricultural cultivators
2.2.1 Primitive cultivating equipment
a. Plough: Tillage is the basic operation in farming. It is
done to create favorable conditions for seed placement
and plant growth. This is done mainly with a plough.[7]
A full history of the evolution of plough is not available.
Farmers have been using plough since time immemorial.
The primitive model might have been a crooked twig or a
branch of a tree. The basic components of the plough are
a shoe, a share, a body, a handle and a beam.[8]
The shoe and body make one piece in the case of ploughs
being used in Kullu, Solan, Shimla, Sirmour, Lahaul &
Spiti and Kinnaur district of Himachal Pradesh. The Joint
between the shoe and the body is purposely avoided with
a view to make the plough more rigid and robust, so that
the implement can work on gravely soils with stones and
other obstacles which are encountered during the course
of ploughing. [10]
Figure 1.3
b. Leveller: The plank of the leveller is made of any
locally available wood and shafts are generally made of
bamboo sticks. [9]Extra weight is added to all type of
planks by placing stones on it or having person (s) ride
on it. As the name suggests, levellers are used for
levelling land
 International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics
Figure 1.4
2.2.2 Industrial Use
To the extent that cultivating is done commercially today
(such as in truck farming), it is usually powered
by tractors, especially row-crop tractors. Industrial
cultivators can vary greatly in size and shape, from 10
feet (3 m) to 80 feet (24 m) wide. Many are equipped
with hydraulic wings that fold up to make road travel
easier and safer. [12]Different types are used for
preparation of fields before planting, and for the control
of weeds between row crops. The cultivator may be an
implement trailed after the tractor via a drawbar;
mounted on the three-point hitch; or mounted on a frame
beneath the tractor. Active cultivator implements are
driven by a power take-off shaft. [13]While most
cultivator are considered a secondary tillage implement,
active cultivators are commonly used for primary tillage
in lighter soils instead of plowing. The largest versions
available are about 6 m (20 ft) wide, and require a tractor
with an excess of 150 horsepower (110 kW) (PTO) to
drive them. Field cultivators are used to
complete tillage operations in many types of
arable crop fields.[15] The main function of the field
cultivator is to prepare a proper seedbed for the crop to
be planted into, to bury crop residue in the soil (helping
to warm the soil before planting), to control weeds, and
to mix and incorporate the soil to ensure the growing
crop has enough water and nutrients to grow well during
the growing season. The implement has many shanks
mounted on the underside of a metal frame, and small
narrow rods at the rear of the machine that smooth out
the soil surface for easier travel later when planting. In
most field cultivators,[11] one-to-many hydraulic
cylinders raise and lower the implement and control its
depth.
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a. Row crop cultivators
The main function of the row crop cultivator is weed
control between the rows of an established crop. Row
crop cultivators are usually raised and lowered by
a three-point hitch and the depth is controlled by gauge
wheels.
Sometimes referred to as sweep cultivators, these
commonly have two center blades that cut weeds from
the roots near the base of the crop and turn over soil,
while two rear sweeps further outward than the center
blades deal with the center of the row, and can be
anywhere from 1 to 36 rows wide[14]
Figure 1.5.Home made sweep. Notice the inner and outer
"sweep" blades
2.2.3 Garden Cultivators
Small tilling equipment, used in small gardens such as
household gardens and small commercial gardens, can
provide both primary and secondary tillage. For example,
a rotary tiller does both the "plowing" and the
"harrowing", preparing a smooth, loose seedbed. It does
not provide the row-wise weed control that cultivator
teeth would. For that task, there are single-person-push
able toothed cultivators.[18-20]
a. Variants and trademarks
Rotary tillers are a type of cultivators. Rotary tillers are
popular with home gardeners who want large vegetable
gardens. The garden may be tilled a few times before
planting each crop. Rotary tillers may be rented from tool
rental centers for single-use applications, such as when
planting grass .A small rotary hoe for domestic gardens
was known by the trademark Rototiller and another,
made by the Howard Group, who produced a range of
rotary tillers, was known as the Rotavator.[21-26]
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b. Rototiller
The small rototiller is typically propelled forward via a
(1–5 horsepower or 0.8–3.5 kilowatts) petrol engine
rotating the tines, and do not have powered wheels,
though they may have small transport/level control
wheel(s). To keep the machine from moving forward too
fast, [16]an adjustable tine is usually fixed just behind the
blades so that through friction with deeper un-tilled soil,
it acts as a brake, slowing the machine and allowing it to
pulverize the soils. The slower a rototiller moves
forward, the more soil tilth can be obtained. The operator
can control the amount of friction/braking action by
raising and lowering the handlebars of the tiller.
Rototillers do not have a reverse as such backwards
movement towards the operator could cause serious
injury. While operating, the rototiller can be pulled
backwards to go over areas that were not pulverized
enough, but care must be taken to ensure that the operator
does not stumble and pull the rototiller on top of himself.
Rototilling is much faster than manual tilling, but
notoriously difficult to handle and exhausting work,
especially in the heavier and higher horsepower models.
If the rototiller's blades catch on unseen subsurface
objects, such as tree roots and buried garbage, it can
cause the rototiller to abruptly and violently move in any
direction.
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