Mangalore: SJEC Students Design Soil Mix Filling Machine
Daijiworld Media Network - Mangalore (SP)
Mangalore, Jun 23: The students of St Joseph's Engineering College, Vamanjoor here, have designed a machine that can fill sacs with soil mix. This machine can be highly useful for nurseries and the horticulture department.
Normally, a man takes 20 seconds to fill a one-kilogram sac with soil mix. This machine completes this task in ten seconds. As against about 300 sacs five workers can fill in a day, with the use of this machine, two people can fill 800 sacs. The machine is particularly handy in the current situation in which shortage of labourers has been affecting the agricultural sector.
Besides saving on time, the machine is cost-effective too. The machine costs about Rs 25,000, with scope for further reduction when produced on a commercial scale. A man having a ten-acre plantation can recover his entire investment within a year. The machine has immense potential in coffee plantations and large nurseries, said Cedric Sandeep D'Souza, Ashiq Krishnan, Ashwin Lawrence Sequeira and Jovial Antony D'Souza, final year engineering (mechanical) of the college.
The machine was designed by the students with the support of the College principal Dr Joseph Gonsalves, cooperation of the head of the department, Tirumaleshwar Bhat and guidance of lecturer Navin Noronha. This machine had been selected for participation in the national level technical symposium.