Designing a Semi-Automated Mushroom poly bag filling Machine

Abstract

Mushroom cultivation holds significant potential for usage as a high-nutritional food around the globe and in Sri Lanka. Sawdust is the primary substrate for growing mushrooms artificially. However, the manual preparation of the substrate and its insertion into poly bags is a time-consuming and labour-intensive task. This study addresses these challenges by proposing a mechanized solution for preparing and filling sawdust growing media into poly bags. The appropriate ratio of the main substrate of sawdust and the essential nutrition ingredient should be well mixed with the water. The design comprises a pneumatically actuated program-mmable logic controller (PLC) controller-operated semi-automated machine featuring four main units: the substrate mixing chamber unit, pot filling unit, compressing unit, and the specially designed flexible knob attaching unit. In the traditional method, planting seeds uses a piece of plastic tubing on top of the pot; instead, here, we used a Flexible knob for seed planting. The most outstanding novelty of the machine is the specially designed flexible knob and attaching system for the mushroom seed planting. In addition, the system’s optimized pasteurization processes lead to a faster turnaround time. We think this a creative solution with enormous potential to empower small-scale growers through cooperative usage agreements and increase output and profitability in large-scale mushroom farms.