The present study was carried out in Agric. Eng. Dept., faculty of Agric., MansouraUniv.  to develop a conical drum for chopping palm fronds and to evaluate the performance of the developed machine. The field experiments were conducted to determine the suitable operation parameters for cutting palm fronds to reach the part lengths suitable for the manufacture of animal feed (silage), compost, simple handicraft industries and renewable energy production. The results showed that increasing the cutting drum speed from 7.75 to  15.44 m/s reduced the cutting length from 6.8 to 3.6 mm and increased the power requirement about 42.8%. The machine productivity was around 262 and 241 palm fronds/h with 89.8 and 86% machine efficiency.