A

Project Report
on

DESIGN AND FABRICATION OF PEDAL POWERED

FLOUR MILL MACHINE
Submitted for partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree
of
BACHELOR OF TECHNOLOGY
In
MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

Submitted By

ASHWANI (1752540032)
GANESH PASWAN (1752540046)
PRADEEP KUMAR (1752540065)
ATUL KUMAR (1752540033)
DEEPAK BHARTI (1752540048)

Project Guide

Mr. ANKIT TRIPATHI (Assistant Professor)

DR. A.P.J. ABDUL KALAM TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY, LUCKNOW,

UTTAR PRADESH, INDIA

1
 JUNE, 2021

CERTIFICATE

It is certified that Ashwani, Ganesh Paswan, Pradeep Kumar, Atul Kumar,

Deepak Bharti has carried out the research work presented in the project
entitled “Design And Fabrication Of Pedal Powerd Flour Mil Machine” for
the award of Bachelor of Technology from Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Technical
University, Lucknow under my supervision. The project embodies the result of
original work and studies carried out by the student himself and the contents of
the project do not form the basis for the award of any other degree to the
candidate or anybody else.

Date:
Place:

Mr. Ankit Tripathi Mr. Sharique Hayat

(Assistant Professor) (Head of Department)

2
 ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I would like to place on record my deep sense of gratitude to Mr. Ankit

Tripathi, assistant professor Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, Buddha Institute
of Technology, Gorakhpur, Pradesh, for generous guidance, help and useful
suggestions.

I express my sincere gratitude to Prof. Ankit Tripathi, Dept. of Mechanical

Engineering, Buddha Institute of Technology, Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, for his
stimulating guidance, continuous encouragement, and supervision throughout
the course of present work.

I am extremely thankful To Dr. R.A. Agrawal, Director, Buddha Institute of

Technology, Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, for providing me infrastructural
facilities to work in, without which this work would not have been possible.

SIGNATURE:
NAME OF STUDENTS:

ASHWANI (1752540032)
GANESH PASWAN (1752540046)
PRADEEP KUMAR (1852540909)
ATUL KUMAR (1752540033)
DEEPAK BHARTI (1752540048)

3
 DECLARATION

We hereby declare that this thesis is our own work and effort.
throughout this documentation wherever contributions of others are
involved, every endeavour was made to acknowledge this clearly with
due reference to literature. this work is being submitted for meeting
the partial fulfilment for the degree of Bachelor of Technology in
Mechanical Engineering at Buddha Institute of Technology,
Gorakhpur for the academic session 2020-2021.

NAME OF STUDENTS: SIGNATURE:

ASHWANI (1752540032)
GANESH PASWAN (1752540046)
PRADEEP KUMAR (1752540058)
ATUL KUMAR (1752540033)
DEEPAK BHARTI (1752540048)

Abstract

4
The socio-economic conditions of peoples living in villages
of developing countries including India, human muscle
power can be good alternative to fulfill the energy
requirements for performing many activities like flour
milling. Pedaling is the most efficient way of utilizing power
from human muscles. Keeping these things in mind a pedal
operated flour mill is developed. The machine consists of a
chain drive and belt drive that turns rotates conventional
stone wheels, where the poured wheat gets crushed to
produce flour. The machine is economically viable, can be
used by common people, save time otherwise spent in
traditional hand cranking of stone wheels and can be
adopted for human-powered process units which could
have intermittent operation without affecting the end-
product. [Prasad A. Hatwalne, Sushil T. Ambadkar, R.V.
Paropate, Vivek R. Gandhewar, A.M. Wankhade. Design and
development of Pedal operated flour mill.

Keywords: Flour Mill, Chain Drive, Pedal Operated.

TABLE OF
CONTENTS
5
Acknowledgments
Certificate
Abstract
Chapter 1
 Introduction
 Need For Pedal Operated Flour
Mill
 Concept development
 Construction And Working
Chapter 2
 Ergonomics design of pedal
operated flour mill
 Saddle Design
 Handle Design
Results
Conclusion
Reference

C H A P T E R I

6
 INTRODUCTION

Wheat and wheat flours are the integral of daily diet of

Indian population. The wheat kernels are processed in

chakki (flour mill) to produce wheat flour is which is

then used to make breads, biscuits, pastas etc. In India

chapatti and other variants of wheat forms the staple

food of majority of population. In manual process the

flour is produced by hand cranking the conventional

stone wheels. But this method is characterized by slow

operation, low production rate. Further this hand

cranking process is physically demanding through

energy and postural requirements. It may also leads to

clinical and anatomical disorders which may affect

operator’s health. In order to make it possible to

operate the system effectively and efficiently it is

necessary to develop this system by giving due respect

to human limitation. Hence ergonomic system of pedal

7
operated flour mill is developed. The ergonomic

consideration mainly includes the selection of

components of system which suits the human capability

and develops the posture to operate system to reduce

the fatigue and chances of musceletole disorders.

Need for pedal operated flour mill

8
The main objective is to design & develop a machine

which uses human power as source of energy to drive

the machine. It basically consists of a simple bicycle

mechanism. In many developing countries like India,

the gap between the ever increasing demand of power

and its generation has prepared a daily busy schedule of

load shedding (power cuts). There are millions of

people in remote villages in India who lives day to day

without reliable power supply. And thus to fulfill there

demand of flour there are conventional hand cranked

grain mill without an easy way to power it. This process

of hand cranking of stone wheels is characterized by

slow operation, fatigue and low production rate. Pedal

power is the transfer of energy from a human source

through the use of a foot pedal and crank system

(Kajogbola R,2010) Since the thigh or quadriceps is

largest and most powerful muscles in the human body it

9
make sense to utilize it for generating as much as

energy from human body. With the body in seat, the

legs can provide a pedal work (Wikipedia 2008). The

person can generate four times more power (1/4

horsepower (hp)) by pedaling than by hand cranking. At

the rate of 1/4 hp, continuous pedaling can be done for

only short time ,about 10 minutes . However pedaling at

half of this power (1/8 hp)can be sustained for around

60 minutes Maximum power produced with legs is

generally limited by adaptions within the oxygen

transportation system. On the other hand the capacity

for arm exercise is dependent upon the amounts of

muscle mass engaged and that is why a person can

generate more power by pedaling than hand cranking

(Tiwari P.S.,2011). Pedal power enables a person to

drive device at same rate as achieved by hand cranking

but with less efforts and fatigue. There are millions of

10
people who live day to day without reliable power to

complete daily work. Often these people are living in

situations where manual labour allows them to sustain

themselves, but mechanical devices can offer one way

to ease the work load .The international labor

organization (ILO) has reported that “The processed

grain is one of the most important elements in the diet

of low income groups in developing countries” The ILO

found that appropriate technologies for grain milling

keep the employment and local earnings. Further

According to United states department of Agriculture,

fresh grains as part of diet reduce the risk of several

chronic diseases, including heart diseases and provide

many vital nutrients. Thus it was felt to have some

machine which can be operated by common people

without any electric power supply and the result is

pedal operated flour mill.

11
 Concept development
The power levels that can be produced by an average
healthy athlete is 75 W maximum(Modak, 1998). A
person can generate more or same amount of power
for longer time if they pedal at certain rate. A simple
rule is that most people engaged in delivering power
continuously for an hour or will be more efficient when
pedaling rate is in the range of 50-70 rpm.(Wilson D.G.
VITA volunteer) Keeping these limitations of human
capabilities in mind the proposed machine consists of
three sub systems: (1) The energy unit, (2)
Transmission mechanism (3) The process unit. The
energy unit basically consists of conventional bicycle
mechanism; the transmission mechanism consists of
chain drive running over a pair of sprockets and belt
drive running over pulley and stone wheels. The
process unit is a pair of stone wheels mounted over
one another where the wheat gets crushed into
powered form to produce wheat flour. All these units
are assembled on bicycle like structure(seat, saddle,
handle etc).

Construction And Working

12
In construction the pedal operated flour mill basically
consists of two units namely the drive unit and
processing unit. The drive unit mainly concerns with
transmission of human power to processing unit. This
transmission of human power to processing unit is
accomplished in two stages. In first stage the operator
uses his feet and legs to rotate pedal around the crank
axel. The pedals in turn are fixed to chain ring
(sprocket) with the teeth’s that engages continuous
chain. The chain then transmits the pedaling action to
cog on the front wheel causing the front sprocket to
rotate and then drive shaft on which pulley is mounted.
In second stage this power from shaft and pulley is
transmitted to processing unit through belt drive. The
processing unit essentially consists of stone wheels,
hopper, and hemispherical collector. The stone wheels
are operated by power from the belt drive where the
wheat kernels which are fed into hopper are crushed
and powered wheat flour is collected in hemispherical
collector.

13
DRIVE MECHANISM:-

The power was transmitted from pedal to the top stone

in different stages. First the power was supplied from
the pedal to big crank axle through the chain and
sprocket drive. The small crank axle converted the
horizontal drive to the vertical drive with the help of
bevel gears. The power was transmitted from vertical
drive again to horizontal drive to rotate the top stone
through the chain drive mechanism. A suitable flywheel
was used for smooth operation. The numbers of teeth on
larger and smaller sprockets were 48 and 18 teeth
respectively with the velocity ratio of 2.66.

CH A P T E R II
14
 Ergonomics design of pedal operated flour mill

Making this design ergonomically

viable mainly concerns with
developing the posture to provide
best possible comfortable posture to
operator during its working so as to
get maximum throughput. This can be
achieved by selecting and arranging
the components of system that best
suits to human capabilities. Since
the thigh or quadriceps is largest
and most powerful muscles in human
body with the body in seat and legs
can produce pedal work [1]. The
person can generate four times more
power (1/4 horsepower (hp)) by
pedaling than by hand cranking. At
the rate of 1/4 hp, continuous
pedaling can be done for only short
time, about 10 minutes. However
pedaling at half of this power (1/8
hp)can be sustained for around 60
minutes Maximum power produced with
legs is generally limited by
adoptions within the oxygen
transportation system. On the other
15
hand the capacity for arm exercise is
dependent upon the amounts of muscle
mass engaged and that is why a person
can generate more power by pedaling
than hand cranking [2]. Pedal power
enables a

person to drive device at same rate

as achieved by hand. Thus it makes
sense to utilize this human muscle
for generating as much as energy from
human body. In order to provide the
ergonomically comfortable system it
is necessary to locate the various
elements of system so that a person
can operate the system with less
effort and hence the fatigue. As the
thigh is being utilized to generate
the power continuously it was decided
to develop a posture which is similar
to cycling posture. And subsequently
the ergonomic design mainly concerned
with the saddle (seat) position,
handle position. Saddle position
includes the height of saddle,
distance between saddle and pedal
crank center, seat tube angle.
Whereas handle position includes handle height,
handle width, distance between saddle and handle.

16
 SADDLE DESIGN

Saddle height from pedal crank center:-

It is biomechanically logical that in order to have
comfortable posture there should be an optimal saddle
height. This saddle height is obtained by keeping in
mind certain facts. The normal pedaling rate for
average healthy person is around 70-80 rpm because
of optimum oxygen intake. Patellar tendontisis is
common injury resulting because of low saddle height.
The low saddle height cause the over compression of
knee, resulting in anterior knee pain. On the other
hand the Biceps tendontisis is injury caused because of
saddle height that is too high which causes the over
stretching at the bottom of stroke. Hence in order to
achieve this balance it recommended that saddle
height should be such that knee angle at the bottom of
stroke should between 25-35°. This saddle to pedal
17
height is achieved by Greg-lemond method. According
to lemond method the distance between saddle and
pedal should be 88.3% of inseam length. Now on the
basis of anthropometric data for Indian context the
average inseam length of an Indian is 76.35cm. And
hence the saddle to handle distance according to
lemond method will be

Saddle height = 0.883*inseam length

= 0.883*76.35
Saddle height = 67.42 cm
B. Seat tube angle (STA)
For comfortable posture the optimum seat tube angle
should be 82°.

18
 HANDLE DESIGN

SADDLE TO HANDLE DISTANCE:-

For handle designs following points regarding human
comfort were taken into consideration.
1) For easy and comfortable riding wrist angle should
not be straight. It should be between 170°-190° .
2) The elbow angle should be between 150°-165° .
3) The angle between upper arm and trunk should be
around 20° to reduce the effect of possible vibration to
shoulders.
4) Further the posture should be such that operator
should lean forward approximately 15° w.r.t vertical
axis which increases the respiratory volume because it
transfers part of shoulders weight to arms and reduces
the load to lower back area without overloading the
arms and wrist.
From the anthropometric data, we have
Upper arm length = 21 Cm.
Lower arm length =24.2 Cm.
Hand length = 18.7 Cm.
19
Thus by using cosine rule we can obtained the distance
between shoulder and wrist with elbow angle 150°

Cos A = (b²+C²-a²)/2bc
Cos 150° = (21.2²+24.22²-a²)/2*21*24.2
Therefore a = 43.8cm.
That is saddle to handle distance = 45cm
As the shoulder angle should be around 20° to reduce
the fatigue as stated earlier.The handle height needs to
be calculated. This can be found out by graphical
method.

20
 Figure: 1

Thus we have following dimensions.

Saddle to handle distance = 45cm
Handle width = 58cm i.e. equal to shoulder width
Handle grip length = 15cm.
Geometry of the structure according to dimensions we
obtained is as follows

21
22
 RESULTS

The pedal operated flour mill is fabricated according

to the dimensions which were derived suitable to
human anthropometry so as to reduce the possible
fatigue during its operation. After fabrication several
trials were conducted on it and their corresponding
time of pedaling and output rate of flour were taken
down for different pedaling rate. For conducting trials
8 personals from age group 20-35 were selected. The
mean (± SD) of age, weight, height were 26.5±
3.5.years, 68.62±21 Kg, 176.8±3 cm respectively. All
23
the trials started at 10 A.M.in the morning in the
laboratory where the room temperature varied from
25-28˚C and relative humidity was 50-60% during
experiment. In order to find out most efficient,
productive way operating the system, the input
pedaling rate is set in three stages vise 30-50-rpm, 50-
70 rpm, and 70-90 rpm. For 30-50 rpm, production
rate observed was slow but the texture of flour was
fine enough. The production rate found to be 25 mins
per Kg& average time that subject can maintain the
pedaling is 15 mins .For 70-80 rpm the production
rate of flour was observed to be maximum but the
flour obtained was somewhat coarser and requires
regrinding. Further it was finding difficult to maintain
this pedaling rate more than 5 mins. When input
pedaling rate is set to 50-70 rpm 1 Kg of wheat
requires 15 mins. To get required fineness double
crushing was required but not to extent as that
requiring at higher pedaling rate. So overall for 1Kg
requires 20 mins and this pedaling rate found more
comfortable than other two.

Conclusion

24
The main objective behind development of pedal
operated flour mill was on producing cheap, easy to
operate system which can be easily fabricated by
readily available material and thus we proposed a
simplistic design that can deliver efficient, productive
and reliable flour mill which can be used in rural as well
as urban areas. this equipment can be easily operated
by semi rather lowskilled operator. Further this
equipment can easily find its place where there is no or
limited power supply.A pedal operated flour mill was
developed for the households in rural areas, where
there is shortage of electricity. The developed flour mill
consisted of a hopper along with a feeding tube at the
top, a pair of grinding stones and the hemi spherical
collector at the bottom, a seat for the operator and
power transmission system. The performance of the
mill was optimum at pedaling rate of 50-60 rpm with
desired fineness. The production rate with this speed
was 6.6 kg/h.

Reference

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encyclopedia.“http://www.appropedia.org/CCAT_peda
25
l_powered_grain_mill”category:engr305
AppropriateTechonology.
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S.K.das “ Sizing of trousers and shirts for Indian
personnel” An Anthropometric application.”; Defence
science journal; Vol 36 no1;January 1986; pp 77-94.
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Timothy Michale “ The effect of bicycle frame
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wintage anaerobic test” Journal of sport science and
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[7] Annupam patnayak, Ashish Apoorva, Md
shahabuddin and V.N.A Naikan
.Ergonomic design of Indian cycle rikshaw. Journal of
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26
[8] Lambros laios, John Giannatsis “ Ergonomic
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(41);2010;pp428-435

27