Designing an Ergonomic Geothermally Heated Pinecone Seed Extractor

Reforestation is one key element to counteract the global climate catastrophe. The Icelandic Forest Service (IFS) provides pine tree seeds in Iceland, using a labor-intensive, time-consuming, and unergonomic process with two various machines for drying and separating the seeds from the cones. To optimize this procedure, the two machines were combined into one machine (SeedEx) following Axiomatic Design and Product Design principles. Aligning Customer Needs (CNs) to desired functionality allowed the team to realize the project in twelve weeks by minimizing design iterations through careful modularity. Changing the main rotation axis of the extractor enables operators to load cones and receive seeds ergonomically. The SeedEx prototype processes 260% of the former daily capacity while reducing labor by 92% and eliminating time delays between processes.