Philippine-made epprouvette for cocoon and raw silk testing for globally-competitive silk products

The manually-operated epprouvette is used in single cocoon reeling test. This test is performed prior to grading cocoons for sale. The performance of an epprouvette used in testing the quality of either cocoon or raw silk was evaluated. The performance of the existing SRDI [Sericulture Research and Development Inst.] epprouvettes (Indian model and EF1-99) was compared with the improved SRDI model (UVM-2000). Findings showed that DMMMSU-SRDI epprouvette model EF1-99 was the fastest, with an average speed of 365 rpm compared with the Indian and UVM-2000 models, which had an average speed of 247 and 206 rpm, respectively. EF1-99 hastened the unwinding of the filaments without breaking during unwinding process. The drive handle to reel rotation of EF1-99 was six times faster than the Indian model and UVM-2000 model. EF1-99 and UVM-2000 has a capacity of five to six cocoons per batch, respectively. On the other hand, the Indian model accomodated only three cocoons per batch. Comparison of economic analysis among the three models showed that EF1-99 and UVM-2000 had higher investment costs (P17,655 and P16,250) because of high quality construction materials used in fabrication. The Indian model had P10,500 investment cost. However, the Indian model had greater daily utilization rate (2.36 hours) compared with SRDI models EF1-99 and UVM-2000, which had 1.33 and 1.18 hours, respectively. The return on investment (ROI) derived in using EF1-99 and UVM-2000 was 34% and 50%, respectively. The Indian model had a negative ROI of 16%. Models EF1-99 and UVM-2000 were made of aluminum and stainless metal. Both has four main components: gear box and based assembly, spur gear assembly, reel assembly and drive handle assembly. The features of the Indian model was almost the same as with the two models except that it was made of plyboard. The use of Philippine-made epprouvette helped standardize quality of cocoon and raw silk that could compete in the world market