Water drilling rigs essential for an all-year- round water supply are either human powered or internal combustion engine driven. Manually powered rigs are simple to assemble but slow, laborious and ineffective in drilling through rocky basement formations while engines powered rigs which are mostly imported, require highly skilled personnel to operate, with an array of expensive consumables and spares for maintenance which takes its cost beyond the reach of many, particularly the rural dwellers. This study designed a low power prototype drilling rig that can obtain its drilling power from the Power Take off (PTO) shaft of an agricultural tractor and capable of getting to a depth of 30 metres in a rocky formation. The design was
subdivided into: structural, hydraulic, and mechanical components respectively. Preliminary tests revealed that at tractor engine speed of 500 rpm, the average PTO speed obtained was 79.8 rpm, 1000 rpm produced 127 rpm, 1500 rpm produced 248 rpm, 2000 rpm produced 365.8 rpm and 2500 rpm produced PTO speed of 539 rpm respectively. The drilling power required for the entire drilling operation was calculated to be 14.7 kW which was lower from the Tractor supply of 41.8 kW. The total cost of the fabrication was ₦ 841, 000 ($4,500) which is significantly lower than motorized rigs available in the open market.
Key words: Prototype, Water drilling rig prototype, power take off, agricultural tractor mounted.
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