Design Of A Traction Double-Row Fully Automatic Transplanter For Vegetable Plug Seedlings

In this study, a traction double-row fully automatic transplanter was designed to improve the transplanting efficiency and automation of vegetable plug seedlings. Special attention was given to the designing of specific key components of the fully automatic transplanter. It is primarily composed of the following specialized devices: seedling feeding, combing, inserting ejecting-type seedling extraction, plate turning, seedling conveyer, seedling separation, double-crank five-bar planting, and empty tray recovery. The displacement, velocity, and acceleration equations of the double-crank five-bar planting mechanism were established to achieve zero-speed planting. A touch screen-programmable logic controller (TS-PLC) control system, power distribution system, pneumatic system, and mechanical transmission system were designed in detail. Closed-loop controlling stepper motors, a DC geared motor, and cylinders were used to drive the devices. The comprehensive performance of the fully automatic transplanter was tested on dry land with the performance index of the qualified transplanting rate, missed transplanting rate, replanting rate, lodging rate, buried seedling rate, exposed plug rate, and injured seedling rate. The experimental results showed that when the planting frequency was 80 plants/(min?row), the qualified transplanting rate was 92.08%, the missed planting rate was 3.61%, the replanting rate was 2.92%, the lodging rate was 0.42%, the buried seedling rate was 0.28%, the exposed plug rate was 0.42%, and the injured seedling rate was 0.28%. All indicators met the performance requirements of vegetable field transplantation on dry land. Under the control of the TS-PLC control system, the devices of the fully automatic transplanter coordinated and cooperated at high speed to automatically perform the procedures of automatic seedling feeding, extracting, conveying, separating, planting, suppressing, and empty tray recovery.