The design and development of an electronic vacuum-pulse recorder for testing milking machine

In order to increase the quality and standards in milking machines, to prevent udder diseases in dairy animals, and to ensure healthy and high milk yield, the control of the milking machine elements should be measured with different test devices. Most of the test devices are able to take vacuum-pulse records from two measurement points in dry conditions, very few in wet or dynamic conditions. In this study, it is aimed to design a portable electronic device that can take vacuum-pulse records from certain points in the pulsator or milking unit in order to better analyze the milking equipment and milking routines and to determine the performance of this device by comparing it with other recording devices in practice. The designed device can perform analog to digital conversion through a 32 bit processor through 4 pressure sensor channels. The resulting 6 kb/s data is recorded on the SD Card and taken into the computer environment. The energy requirement of the device was met by the Li-Ion battery and the charging circuits, and the power requirement of the sensors and interfaces. The performance of the design device named Hayuka was connected in parallel with two different brands of recording devices (Exendis-PT V and GEA-Pulsotest Comfort (V 1.2)) in a portable milking machine with pneumatic pulsators and vacuum-pulse frequency data were compared. Since PT V and V 1.2 devices have two sensor channels and Hayuka device has 4 sensor channels, channel 1-2 of the Hayuka device is named Hayuka-A and channel 3-4 is named Hayuka-B in order to compare the devices statistically. Thus, in experiments, 4 different devices were used at 2 different system vacuum pressure of the milking machine (44 and 50 kPa) and 9 different pulse rates of each vacuum (60, 90, 120, 150, 180, 200, 240, 260 and 300 min-1, respectively), A total of 13 vacuum and pulse frequency measurements were made. In the results of the research, 5 of these pulse frequencies were evaluated. According to the comparative test results obtained, when the variance analysis of the maximum pulsation chamber vacuum values of 4 devices in both 44 and 50 kPa system vacuum experiments are examined, device name, channel number, NS set values and device name x channel number, device name x NS set, channel no x NS set and device name x channel no x NS set interactions were found to be significant compared to 1% probability level. Variance analysis and interaction of (1) maximum pulsation chamber vacuum pressure, (2) measured pulsation rates, (3) pulsator ratio, (4) maximum vacuum phase and (5) minimum vacuum phase values of Hayuka-A and Hayuka-B devices showed that it obtained very similar results with PT V and V 1.2 devices.