Design and construction of dual-powered coffee grinding machine.

Abstract

Coffee is an important cash crop contributing 20% of Uganda’s foreign exchange and about 500,000 households depend on coffee production as a major source of income and mainly is grown by smallholders with an estimated average coffee farm size of 0.58 hectares processing is done by dry and wet method. Coffee roasting and grinding has been found to enhance the taste of both Arabica and Robusta. It has the added advantage of producing coffees of superior quality which translate to better prices in the market. Coffee grinders are small in size and cannot used for large production. However, where farmers can neither access coffee grinders nor afford to pay for its services a lot of improvisation and traditional methods have been employed to grind coffee. This method is time wasting, labor intensive, the output is of low quality. This project report describes the design and fabrication of a dual-coffee grinding machine aimed at increasing production capacity, saving time and increasing output of coffee. Component parts of the dual coffee grinding machine were designed, fabricated and assembled into a portable prototype which is screwed on the table when in operation. The prototype was tested giving an average production capacity 1Kg/hr with an efficiency of 69%when manually operated and 3kg when operated using motor with efficiency of 76%. The cost evaluation analysis of the designed and fabricated dual-powered coffee grinding machine was carried to determine the cost incurred during fabrication to find out if the machine is more economical and affordable compared to the available coffee grinders on market.