Desain dan Konstruksi Mesin Penyemai Benih Sayuran Portabel Tipe Vakum untuk Pembibitan pada Talam Semai

In Indonesia, vegetable seeding technique in nursery plug trays still uses manual mechanism. Furthermore, the small size of vegetable seeds makes it difficult to allocate the seeds evenly (1 seed per planting hole). This study aims to design and construct a portable vegetable seeder with a vacuum-type mechanism for nursery needs in plug trays. The methods used in this study were: 1) preliminary test of seed characteristics, 2) functional analysis of the design, 3) structural analysis of the design using CAD, 4) fabricating a prototype, and 5) performance test of the seeder prototype. Seed characteristic used as reference analysis was mustard green seeds. The nursery plug tray used was TS-128L tray (128 planting holes). The results show that the suction requirement of the seeder was 23.119 Pa and the seed suction holes diameter was 1 mm with a cone angle of 120 o . The overall dimensions of the machine are 585 × 430 × 105 mm with 5.26 kg of weight. The suction power uses 220 V AC electric blower with 1.5 A of electric current, 2.5 inches of inlet hole, 3600 rpm of blower rotation and 412.02 Pa of suction power (bigger than the suction requirement of the seeder). The performance test results of seeder using mustard green seeds have been able to achieve the uniformity level of 93.75% (1 seed per planting hole), germination percentage of 95.05% and seeding capacity of 102 trays/hour.