Development of a portable bundle strength tester for lignocellulosic fibres

The present study intended to develop a portable, low-cost, digital bundle strength tester for measuring strength of lignocellulosic fibres. The developed instrument comprises of mechanical fibre breaking unit and embedded system. The fibre breaking unit consists of base frame, jaws, clamping unit, feed screw and gear drive. Embedded system has been developed using Arduino Mega 2560, limit switch, load cell with HX711 interface, motor driver, buck converter and potentiometer. Fibres of jute, mesta, bimli and banana have been tested in this instrument and results have been compared with existing electronic bundle strength tester to justify the validation of developed instrument. Comparative analysis revealed that the readings obtained from the developed instrument have been non-significant (P>0.05) when compared to the readings obtained from the existing electronic fiber bundle strength tester implying a close similarity in results. Gage evaluation of repeatability in nested gage repeatability and reproducibility has shown variation of 25.09% which is well within the acceptable limit. The developed instrument is capable of being powered by a 24V, 16A battery, providing up to 6 hours of continuous testing operation. This newly developed testing device offers advantages such as reduced cost, smaller size and light weight compared to existing instruments.