Design and test of rice potted-seedling transplanting mechanism with three transplanting arms

Abstract: Rice potted-seedlings transplanting is one kind of rice planting way, and it can increase the production and improve rice quality because it has the advantages of not hurting root and not needing recovering period. The rice pot seedling transplanting will have a good prospect in the future, but at present the application of rice pot seedling transplanting machine is less in China because there are defects for domestic transplanter with tossing transplanting such as uncontrollable seedling perpendicularity, complex structure, low efficiency and heavy vibration. Foreign rice potted-seedling planting technology is not suitable in China for complicated structure and high cost, and the key to improve the mechanization of rice planting is to research the rice potted-seedling transplanting mechanism suitable to China. Aiming to the above problems, a three-transplanting-arm rice potted-seedling transplanting mechanism of planetary gear train with non-circular gears and incomplete non-circular gear, which is applied in automatic rice potted-seedling transplanter, was designed. The mechanism consists of an incomplete non-circular gear, 3 pairs of conjugate non-circular gears and 3 planting arms, which can transplant seedlings 3 times a week. It means that under the same transplanting efficiency, it can reduce the transplanting spindle rotation, so as to reduce the vibration and improve the success rate of transplanting. Firstly, the shortcomings of the rotary transplanting mechanism with 2 transplanters were analyzed, and the design requirements were put forward. According to the requirements, the implementation plan was advanced. Then, the operation principle of rice potted-seedling transplanting mechanism was introduced, the mathematical expression in parametric form for the trajectory and the equations of non-circular gears and incomplete non-circular gears were derived, and the kinematic model of transplanting mechanism was established. A computer-aided analysis and optimization software of this kind of rice potted-seedling transplanting mechanism was developed with the Visual Basic 6.0. With the method of human-computer interaction based on visualization, the optimization design of the transplanting mechanism was carried out. Using this software, by tuning the design parameters, the influence of every parameter on the optimization object could be found out. The curve of non-circular gears was optimized and the structural parameters were obtained, which can satisfy the requirements of trajectory and attitude in the transplanting process for rice potted-seedling. The 3D (three-dimensional) model of transplanting mechanism was built and assembled in UG's entity modeling module. The virtual prototype was imported into Adams software after the interference checking of 3D model assembly was finished. According to the comparison between the virtual prototype simulation and the theoretical analysis of VB (Visual Basic), the trajectory of them was fundamentally consistent, so the correctness of the model of VB was verified, and the simulation results initially showed the design of mechanism was rational. In order to further verify the correctness of the design, the core components of transplanting mechanism were machined and assembled. Then, the physical prototype of the transplanting mechanism was developed to carry out the kinematics test in the test shelf. The results turned out that the static trajectory of the elastic tip of this transplanting arm and transplanting posture were basically consistent between the virtual prototype simulation and the physical prototype test, which proved the rationality and effectiveness of the parameters of transplanting mechanism. And the feasibility of this transplanting mechanism was verified. At the same time, the mechanism proposed solved the problem of seedling lodging and low transplanting success rate, and the efficiency of transplanting was improved. The research can provide a theoretical basis for developing transplanting mechanisms of rice potted-seedling.