INTRODUCTION 1999
This thresher was built in 1978 and this report was written in 1979. VITA of USA kindly published it. Recently I see that some current designs of man powered equipment for use in 3rd world locations are not any better than what I was doing 20 years ago. And opportunities and media (e.g. the Internet) for dissemination of information have bettered by leaps and bounds during those 20 years. Regrettably also many 3rd world economies for a variety of reasons have stagnated or gone backwards during the last 20 years. So this kind of stuff may still be valid.
So I take the liberty of reissuing the VITA report with a few very minor changes, with the addition of some photos, and with a little summary (immediately below) of some of the options for design of this kind of stuff, and some tips and tricks.
This report is web-ready, and can also be viewed from local hard disc. The web pages can be viewed by any browser.
Alex Weir November 1999.