Design and Fabrication of Multi Fiber Extraction Machine

The interest of using natural plant fiber is increasing. Nowadays Natural fibers are preferable than synthetic fiber for their appropriate stiffness, mechanical properties and high disposability. There are two ways of plant stem fiber extraction adopted. These are stripping and decortications by a decorticator. Manual extraction of fibers by stripping method is tedious, time consuming and cannot be recommended for industrial application. A decorticator is a machine used for extraction of fiber from the skin, bark, or rind off nuts, wood, plant stalks etc. It is a semi-automatic machine used in the production of natural plant stem fiber extraction but it is expensive and not available in Ethiopia. The country had an agricultural lead economy, producing a variety of cereals, fruits, vegetables and cash crops. The Authors designed and fabricated plant stem fiber extraction machine. The machine has a horizontal drum whereby a drum has two different surfaces. On the first half drum surface, small nails are closely welded in order used to extract fiber from plant stem which have a flat surface like, banana plant, sisal plant etc. The second half drum surface is grooved used to extract fiber from plant stem which have a circular shape like papyrus plant. The fiber extraction could be performed simply by feeding a cleaned part of the stem through feeding unit of machine. In the country there is no electromechanical plant fiber extraction machine. Some plant fiber extractor's uses manual extraction of plant fiber. Fabricated plant stem fiber extraction machine have a higher production than manual extraction. The Authors fabricated the machine for the first time in the country and some modification may be required in the future.