طراحي و ساخت خارزن دستي نخل خرما

Design, Development, and Evaluation of a Date Palm Dethroning Device

Date palm dethroning means removing the thorns (or spins) off the palm fronds which plays a great role in date quality. This operation is done traditionally by means of different types of sickles in Iran and nearly all over the world. In this way the operation intensity is high takinga bout 5-10 minutes to do the operation for each palm, with high frond midrib injuries. The workers also sustain many injuries during the operation. However, this operation has been neglected in recent years. In this research, a hand-held date palm dethroning device is designed, developed and evaluated in order to overcome the aforementioned operation problems. The device consisted of a 1.5 meters aluminum pole, a jaw mechanism, two counter moving blades, three rollers to facilitate the device-frond interaction, a lever on the lower end to actuate the blades, and two shielded cables to transmit force and movement from the lever to the jaw. It requires only manpower and only one worker is needed to do the operation. Preliminary evaluation of this device showed that it reduces the operation time to less than 3 minutes for each palm, and also decreases the frond midrib injuries in comparison with the traditional devices. Its maximum operation height is about 2.5 meters. This device has been patented in Iranʹs Patent Office under number: 31590.