In the early days, Fresh Fruit Bunches (FFB) of tall palm trees were harvested using a sickle attached to a long wooden pole or bamboo. But, this device inconvenient in that the pole length is fixed making it difficult to harvest FFB from palms of varying heights. The heavy weight of the wooden or bamboo poles makes the handling of the harvesting device inefficient.
Nowadays, the long wooden pole or bamboo was replaced by telescopic aluminium poles. By using the telescopic action, the length of the pole is no longer fixed, the pole can be extend and reduce, making it easy to harvest FFB from palms varying height.
However, the telescopic pole has to be assembled manually in horizontal position. The pole still heavy to stand vertically after assembled. Furthermore, assembling the pole manually consumes lot of time.
To cut the time and overcome lifting problem, the telescopic oil palm harvesting pole is added with drive mechanism for the pole length can be extend and reduce in vertical position and consumes less time to operate. In previous invention, the cordless screwdriver has been use as the drive mechanism for the telescopic pole.
Nevertheless, the use of cordless screwdriver as drive mechanism has limitation. Cordless Screwdriver was powered by power pack. Whenever the power pack has lost its power, the power pack needs to be recharged. Its limitation makes it unpractical to use in the plantation for several reason. Every day, the worker will harvest the FFB in large amount that cover more than 20 trees. Unfortunately, the power pack cannot provide much energy to harvest the FFB more than 20 trees.
Thus, an alternative sort of drive mechanism for telescopic pole was determined. The drive mechanism must be practical to use and can help the workers to harvest all the FFB efficiently. The reel was chosen to be a suitable and relevant as a drive mechanism for the telescopic pole for oil palm harvesting pole.
The telescopic oil palm harvesting pole with reel as drive mechanism
