Development and Evaluation of an Electric Lawn Mower : Low Cost Lawn Mower Development

An electric mower was modified in the workshop of the Department of Farm Power and Machinery and evaluated in front of Food Technology and Rural Industries Department and behind the Computer Science and Mathematics Department of Bangladesh Agricultural University. The mower was evaluated with three different types of grass such as lawn grass, large grass and mixed grass using two types of cutter (Disc cutter, Flexible single wire). The average cutting efficiency of the mower using disc cutter and single wire for lawn grass, large grass, and mixed grass are 98.48 %, 97.57 %, 95.10 % and 97.90 %, 97.46 %, 94.30 % respectively. The average effective field capacity of the mower using disc cutter and single wire for lawn grass, large grass, mixed grass are 0.0154 ha/hr, 0.0137 ha/hr, 0.0129 ha/hr and 0.0130 ha/hr, 0.0098 ha/hr, 0.0085 ha/hr respectively. The cost of operation of electric lawn mower was compared with manual operation in terms of field capacity neglecting initial cost of lawn mower. The cost of manual operation was nine times more than operational cost of mower and cost in case of singe wire was also higher than mower using disc cutter in terms of field capacity.