DESIGN AND EVALUATION OF A MANUALLY OPERATED
FORAGE CHOPPER
A Thesis 
Presented to
The Faculty of the College of Agriculture 
Central Philippine University 
Iloilo City
In Partial Fulfillment 
of the Requirements for the Degree 
BACHELOR OF SCIENCE IN AGRICULTURAL ENGINEERING
Xykster Celso Pelaez
July 2009
ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS
DESIGN AND EVALUATION OF A MANUALLY OPERATED
FORAGE CHOPPER
By
Xykster C. Pelaez 
Aries Roda D. Romallosa, Adviser
The study was conducted to design and evaluate the performance of the manually operated 
forage chopper. The fabrication was done at a local welding shop in Mina, Iloilo on May 4 
to 11, 2009 and the performance testing and evaluation were conducted from May 13 to 
14, 2009 at Brgy. Cabalabaguan, Mina Iloilo. The forage chopper consists of the feed 
hopper, handle, discharge chute, flywheel and cutting rotor as major components. It chops 
forage materials into short parallel lengths. Operation of the shredder starts from loading 
forage material into the feeding hopper. The materials are cut by shearing action of the 
cutting blades of the machine. Performance evaluation of the forage chopper revealed that 
it can easily chop 2 kg of swamp cabbage in an average of 35 sec operating time at an 
approximate speed of 60 rpm. It has a chopping capacity of 3.49 kg/min at 10 min/day 
operation, just enough to provide the forage needed for backyard raising, The machine has 
a chopping efficiency of 93.33% producing chopped materials with an average length of 
1.42 in. Data show that the forage chopper can be fabricated using locally available 
materials. It has an investment cost of P4,000.00 The fixed and variable costs per day 
amounted to P7.35 and P25, respectively, giving a total cost of P32.25 per day. The cost 
incurred in operating the machine is P0.93 per kg of forage material.
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