Results from Mali...

Thom returned safe and sound from his trip to Mali...an early Christmas gift for us here at OneLab. Our friends over at CTI have already been receiving inquiries about the thresher, most noticeably from the Peace Corps Africa. The next phase of the project is to refine the design so it can be fabricated from metal. We hope to build a few more prototypes, but the end goal is to develop a system that can be built and maintained in the specific country of use.

A brief overview of the trip:

A working farm:



Harvested millet waiting to be processed:


Storage (notice pile of millet in back right...and GIANT chicken at bottom!)


Transportation from fields:


New method of threshing (we didn't expect this one...which is EXACTLY why field observation is critical) Notice small black lumps on ground at right...apparently this site also served as the mules restroom...


Winnowing:

Sifting:

Prototype test: Notice the plastic bottle. This was used to cover the panicle (stalk) during the stripping because the grains were flying all over the place (yet another example of the importance of field testing)

Power winnowing:


Final product:

Data:


The real results:



The system was left in Mali for additional testing and we hope to have more data to further validate these incredible results!