7/28/2025 Taylor Parks
Written by Taylor Parks
While he and his wife lived in Australia, MechSE Teaching Assistant Professor Mickey Clemon (then a lecturer at the University of Technology Sydney), began collaborating on an ongoing effort to improve wool harvesting—an effort that would benefit both sheep and humans.
For decades, wool harvesting has been a challenge. “[Shearing] is done in hot environments, and the ergonomics of it are poor,” Clemon explained, noting the danger posed to sheep during the process. “Shearers can injure themselves out or age out from the job quite quickly—the job lifespan of a professional sheep shearer is often very short.”
In response, the Australian wool industry has been exploring methods to improve worker retention, reduce injuries to humans and sheep, and improve wool quality. These efforts have included experimenting with laser-based shearing, medical treatments, and innovations in traditional shearing—all without success.
However, a current state-of-the-art method, an injection that weakens wool at the follicles, shows promise. Weakening the wool follicles prior to harvest allows harvesters to pluck the wool from the sheep without the need for shearing devices, which reduces both the risk of injury and the required skill level. Still, the vaccine’s formula and treatment are under active investigation—too strong and the wool falls off the sheep in the field prior to harvest; too weak and it cannot be easily plucked at harvest time, which may cause discomfort to the sheep.
“In recent developments, [researchers] have been getting closer to developing this currently injectable treatment for sheep,” Clemon said, noting that they have been able to inject a test flock in a controlled setting. “This is where our ME 470 team came in. Knowing about this injectable treatment inspires that idea that we need mechanical systems to aid in harvesting the wool once the treatment is effective and available.”
The goal for team members Shivaditya Bose, Hana Lee, Rene Mohammadi, Nathan Martorana, John Miles, and Larry St. Pierre was to explore cost-effective, sustainable methods for plucking wool off the sheep in the same amount of time that traditional shearing would take.
The team split into subteams for belt, gear, and custom apparatus. To understand the shearing process, they visited the Beef and Sheep Research Field Laboratory on the University of Illinois campus. “It gave us some insight on how we wanted to move forward with our design in terms of safety,” Mohammadi said of the experience.
Working with the wool itself also presents challenges. As a raw material, wool tends to be inconsistent in form and oily to the touch.
“Wool tangles and gets into any knicks and corners it can find,” Bose explained. “If it’s too oily, it can get stuck, and if it’s not oily enough, it becomes harder to pluck.”
The team experimented with polyester filling before implementing real wool from the beef and sheep lab. They set the wool in a test rig to mimic the weakened follicular properties of sheep skin. Their final prototype used a belt drive to turn a spiked plucking gear.
Clemon hopes to continue sponsoring ME 470 teams to pursue a marketable solution.
“Now that robotics and microcontrollers are much cheaper than they were twenty years ago, I think there’s a real opportunity to bring automation and clever mechanical design into more farming practices,” Clemon said. “There are lots of jobs that people do because they’re impractical for robots—the job requires the adaptability and insight of people, and it’s done in a dirty, sometimes dangerous environment. There’s an opportunity for students to explore how to bring automation to these sorts of jobs and make them faster and easier for people to accomplish.”