POULTRY FEED MIXING MACHINE DESIGN ANALYSIS

The idea of mixing various feed materials such as grains, feed supplements and other animal feeds to produce a homogenous mix ready for dispensing for animal consumption had being part of man's activities since the creation of man. This has always been done using crude method such as hands, sticks etc. in this recent time, the advancement in technology has brought about the use of machines to perform the same function much faster, accurate and less energy consuming, it is for this purpose that the feed mixing machine has been designed. There is a universal demand for poultry feed due to its use in domestic poultry as a machinery for food production. Our small-scale industries in the country are in dire need of a highly nutritious poultry feed for their birds to increase production output. Food is one of the most important basic needs of animals like the hogs in order to survive. Design analysis is a powerful software technology for simulating physical behavior on the computer. Will it break? Will it deform? Will it get too hot? These are the types of questions for which design analysis provides accurate answers. Instead of building a prototype and developing elaborate testing regimens to analyze the physical behavior of a product, engineers can elicit this information quickly and accurately on the computer. Because design analysis can minimize or even eliminate the need for physical prototyping and testing, the technology has gone mainstream in the manufacturing world over the past decade as a valuable product development tool and has become omnipresent in almost all fields of engineering. The principle of operation is a very simple one. Already crushed poultry feed ingredients are placed between stationary drum and the rotating inclined blades agitates the feeds which mixes the various poultry feed ingredients as a result forces between the poultry feeds and the stationary drum on one hand and the frictional forces between neighboring feeds. The making of poultry feeds which has hitherto been regarded as an exclusive function of the poultry farmer can be done by anybody who will need a little training on the operation of the machine, in addition time and space is a major advantage as not only that the long duration normally involved has been reduced but the numerous containers ranging from mortar, pestle, basin etc, have been limited to the machine. The machine was designed using solid work/solid edge design software and suitable material selection was done before the couplings and construction of parts. The efficiency of the machine, its associated cost of production and the product obtained after few minutes of mixing were outstanding, thereby, making the design acceptable and cost effective.