Design Of A Ditcher Equipped With Scrapers For Making Drainage Channel On Dry Land Sugar Cane Plantation

Abstract

The objective of the research was to design a ditcher equipped with a pair of scrapers and pulled by a four-wheel tractor. The ditcher was designed to produce drainage channel with trapezoidal shape for dry land sugar cane plantation. The ditcher should be operated without using the PTa of the tractor, and be able to scrape the dug soil and place it on the top of initial ridges. A prototype of the ditcher has been designed and developed. The ditcher was consisted of two main components: 1) a ditcher and 2) scrapers. The ditcher was designed to cut-across the ridge and throw the soil to the right and left side of the ditcher in making the drainage channel across the planting ridges. A pair of scrapper was set to the ditcher for scrapping the soil in between the ridges and put it on the top of the ridges. Scraping mechanism was driven by an additional wheel that rolls on the ridge's profile. By the mechanism, the ditcher could make drainage channel across the ridge without using the PTa of the tractor. The test result conducted at the Experimental Field of IPB and Jatitujuh Sugar Cane Plantation, showed that the prototype operated well for making the desired drainage channel with the field capacity of 6.85 halhour. The cross section of the resulted ditches was trapezoid with the dimension of 38.7 em depth, 37.9 em lower side, and 100.2 em upper side.