Project Details

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Designing a Mechanical Sweet Corn Harvester

Company: Shawn Mankamyer

Major(s):
Primary: ME
Secondary: EE
Optional: ESC

Non-Disclosure Agreement: NO

Intellectual Property: NO

Background Farms have two options for harvesting sweet corn. Some farms pick their corn by hand, and others use mechanical harvesters. The issue is that with rising labor costs, many small farms want to use faster mechanical harvesters, but no options exist withing the price range these farms need. Because of this, small sweet corn farms are struggling to compete with the larger farms than can afford large harvesters. To address this issue and help so many farms in need of functional, low cost equipment, a pending start-up called Bluebird Agriculture is developing a small mechanical sweet corn harvester. This machine is designed to pick corn quickly and efficiently while staying as low cost as possible and is designed with all the needs of a small farm in mind. What Can Be Expected In this project, students will work with a prototype harvester to engineer new components, build what they designed, and test their work with an in-field harvest trial. The end goal of this project is to push this harvester from a concept prototype to a feasible harvesting machine fit for the needs of small farms. This project will be guided by the abilities of each student, but work with both mechanical systems such as belt drives and conveyors as well as electro-mechanical systems can be expected. Because of this, students from many different engineering backgrounds will be able to design and build a revolutionary harvesting machine and ultimately close a gap in harvesting technology that will help countless small farms.