Maintenance-repair analysis of cotton harvesting machines

The frequency and detection of malfunctions can be seen as an important parameter, especially in harvesting machines operating in short periods. Cotton harvesting machines operate in a shorter period of time compared to other agricultural equipment, therefore, in order for the machines to operate with maximum efficiency in a limited time, it is of particular importance to perform timely and complete maintenance, detect malfunctions and take preventive actions before these malfunctions occur. In addition to the occurrence of malfunctions, the time taken to repair the malfunctions and the impact of these malfunctions on the total cost and profit are also important issues that need to be investigated. The cotton harvester does not work in a fixed area as much as a tractor, but follows a specific route. This route means working in different conditions. The change of fault conditions according to these conditions and their effects on maintenance situations should also be known for machine owners. In this study, it is aimed to carry out a maintenance-repair analysis specific to our country with a high degree of accuracy. In this study, route, failure types and distributions, failure rate and maintenance & repair analysis were made by collecting the maintenance and malfunction records of 50 cotton harvesting machines which have 91.07% of Turkey's cotton production covering nine cities and constituting 69% of the total park in within the five-year harvest period. As a result of the route analysis, it was determined that there was a route between the regions or the machines were operating at low capacity. As a result of the analysis of failure types and distributions, it was determined that the system that failure the most was the units with 21.4%, and the system that failure the least was the cabin with 6%. As a result of the failure rate analysis, the average annual cotton harvester usage time was calculated as 569.7 h/year. The failure rate for 2019 is calculated as 0.0055, the failure rate for 2020 is 0.0068, the failure rate for 2021 is 0.063, the failure rate for 2022 is 0.0068 and the failure rate for 2023 is 0.0082. In the studied period, the smallest downtime was determined as 11.5 hours and the largest downtime was 57.75 hours. The average failure rate was calculated as 1.2%. As a result of the maintenance-repair cost analysis, it was determined that the hydraulic system had the highest cost among the parts that malfunctioned, the rate being 23.6%. The lowest cost occurred in the cabin section in terms of parts and labor, the rate is 2.0%. It was determined that the machine had a repair cost of $4.1 per working hour.