DESIGN, FABRICATION AND

PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF
A SEMI-AUTOMATED COCONUT
LEAVES SEPARATOR MACHINE
FOR BROOMSTICK MAKING
Presented by Catherine Gavia

Kevin Titiw-a
Adviser
 Background of the Study

Coconut is a great natural resources. It provides food,

drink, clothing and shelter. Aside from its natural products,
it also provides income for livelihood. One of its product is
the broomstick, or more locally known as “walis ting-ting”
and is considered as a very important cleaning tool among
Filipinos.
 Background of the Study

The walis tingting is made from the middle veins, also

called as midribs, of the frond pinnae of coconut leaves.
Traditionally, the midribs are manually separated from the
leaves and cleaned manually with the use of a blade. This
type of manual process consumes a lot of time, thus
limiting the production rate.
Background of the Study
Observing how the traditional method of producing
coconut broomsticks contrasts with the methods used to
produce other types of brooms gave rise to the idea of
creating this machine to separate midribs from coconut
leaflets. Using a blade or knife to manually cut the midrib
from a leaflet takes too much time that could be spent on
more fruitful activities. When comparing a human to a
machine, a person is inconsistent and ultimately becomes
fatigued whereas a machine consistently delivers work
and maximizes performance.
Statement of the Problem
How the machine helps to remove the

1 leaves without destroying the

midribs?

2 How do we make a machine that

is affordable?

3
How can we help to reduce or lessen
the amount of time in producing
broomstick?

4
What should be the quality of the
coconut leaves?
 2 To produce and fabricate

Objectives a machine that is cost

efficient and to lessen
the amount of time
required in production.
To determine the best
materials that will remove the
leaves without destroying the
3
1
midribs through trial and error.
To determine the best
quality and the required
quality of the coconut leaf.
Significance of the Study
- The purpose of the study is to design and assess the
performance and acceptability level of the new machine
compared to the traditional one.
- This study aims to improve and solve the issues using the
traditional making of broomstick which is the used of blades
and knives.
- The users will know that using this machine will be safer,
more efficient, and less time-consuming and make their job
easier in daily lives.
Scope and Limitations
The scope of this study is to design, fabricate and evaluate
a machine that will be used in making a broomstick. This
study only focuses on the factors that need to be consider
in making the machine safer to use and on how the
machine will decreases human interaction in the process
of making. This study does not cover the other type of
broomstick but only to coconut broomsticks.
 Literature Review
Related Literature 1
The Philippines is the second largest producer of
coconut products in the world next to Indonesia.
The coconut production from April to June 2021
grew to 3.29 million metric tons or an increase of
0.8 percent from 3.26 million metric tons in the
same quarter of the preview year. Davao region
was the top producer with 455.45 thousand metric
tons output or 13.8 percent of total coconut
production. This was followed by Northern
Mindanao and Zamboanga Peninsula with 13.3 and
12.7 percent shares, respectively (PSA, 2021).
Related Literature 2
Midrib of coconut leaf contains 67.12%
hollocelulose. Availability of coconut leaves and
chemical composition are the possibility to take it
under consideration of a raw material of pulp and
paper mills. It is used for fuel and it has no
effective use. The use of midrib in pulp and paper
industry is one of the economic uses. It will also
help to solve the problem of raw material for pulp
and paper industry. In this study, therefore, it was
tried to identify the pulp quality of midrib of
coconut leaves considering the pulp properties.
 Literature Review
Related Literature 3 Related Literature 4

The project will give farmers It is possible to teach someone to make a

additional income through a broom quite easily and quickly but it takes
time to get good at it – the more
sharing scheme between the
frequently you make besoms, the neater
project beneficiaries and the and better you make them. The demand
people’s organization (PO). Thus, for besoms has fallen substantially (by as
for every harvest of 8 to 10 much as 75 per cent) in the last 15-20
bundles, which is equivalent to 8 years – main customers tend to be people
who used besoms growing up and they are
brooms, the PO gets one bundle.
now ageing and dying off
Design of the Machine
Electric
Motor
Chain and
Sprockets Steel Brush
Rollers

Outlet Conveyor
Rollers

Inlet

Wheels

Bin
Materials

Electric Motor Steel Brush Rollers Conveyor Rollers Chains

Bin Steel Bars

Principle of Operation
In machine operation, the power from the prime mover will be
transmitted to the conveyor rollers through pulleys and chain and
sprocket. Belts are attached to the shaft which is responsible for
receiving power to the motor. After the prime mover starts, through the
operator’s assistance by inserting coconut leaves to the machine, the steel
brush rollers will start to scrape the coconut leaves and separate its
leaflets to midribs. The midribs will drop into the bin and the dust came
from the leaves will drop into the trash bin.
 Evaluation Procedure
The duration of time shall start from the first discharge
Separate the leaflets to keel. of the broomstick at the outlet and shall end after the
discharge of the product.

The leaflets will scrape and separate the leaflets

After operating time, the midrib shall be collected.
to midribs through steel brush rollers.

Three trials shall be conducted during evaluation. One Observation to be taken during the performance
bundle for each different types of coconut leaves like fresh
test shall be recorded.
leaves and dried leaves.

The speed of the conveyor rollers will vary on the toroidal

transformer. The rpm of the steel brush and the shaft of the
machine is measured by tachometer.
 Data to be Gathered
Time of operation (min)

Number of leaves fed Number of bundles per hour

Number of sticks peeled well Power rate consumption per hour

Number of stick not peeled well

 Statistical Analysis
The study will consider the operating speed of belt and pulley, expressed in
revolution per minute (rpm). It will be determined during the preliminary
testing of the machine. The data to be gathered will be analyzed through
one factorial analysis in a Completely Randomized Design (CRD with
three replications). Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) shall be used to
determine whether differences among treatment means are significantly
different. In contrast, the Least Significant Difference (LSD) will determine
which among the treatment means are significantly different from each
other.