Development and Performance Evaluation of Hydraulic Brick Moulding Machine

Abstract

The pressing need for building materials in Nigeria and Africa in general, particularly for low-cost housing in rural areas, has now become a major issue of concern. Many naturally occurring substances, such as clay, sand, wood, and rocks are over 90% available in these rural areas. However, the cost of sophisticated modern brick moulding machines ranges between $2,500 and $3,000. Hence, there is a need to develop and evaluate the performance of a hydraulic brick moulding machine that can produce large quantities of bricks at an affordable cost by the people in the rural areas. The developed machine has several distinct parts: U-channel frame section made of mild steel (23.53 m3 volume), angle plate (10.06 m3 volume), hydraulic reservoir (1,000 m 3 volume), hydraulic cylinder, the pump (1.36 hp), pulleys (60 mm and 100 mm diameter; 125.68 rad/s and 209.47 rad/s angular velocity; 1,200 rpm and 200 rpm speed), and mould. The performance evaluation of the machine was carried out and a production of an average number of 86 bricks per hour was recorded, with machine efficiency of 75%. The machine is effective, easy to operate, relatively cheap with a production cost of $700 only.