Design and test of the cotton stalk pulling equipment with toothed plate

The whole cotton stalks are extremely difficult to pull out in Xinjiang in western China. Taking the cotton stalk as the research object, a stalk uprooting equipment with the toothed plate was designed and manufactured, in order to reduce the rate of breakage and leakage, a better performance was achieved without entering into the soil to take out the whole stalks plant, to reduce the influence of the working part on the recycling of the membrane. The device consisted of the V-shaped toothed plate group, the support to harvest clamping belt and tension adjustment. Mathematical analysis was performed on the movement of the V-type tooth plate group, and the support force of the harvesting belt clamping cotton stalks. The clamping point of cotton stalks and supporting stalks trajectory were established in the speed equation of the V-type tooth plate group, according to the agronomic requirements in the mechanical harvesting of cotton planting. The rotating speed of the tooth plate was greater than the proceeding speed. The speed of the clamping belt was much greater than the forward speed of the machine tool level. In order to determine the range of the working parameters, a three-factor and three-level second regression quadratic test was also designed to explore the importance of each parameter in the removal of cotton stalks using Design Expert 13 software. The forward speed, toothed-plate rotational speed, and belt speed were taken as the test factors, with the cotton stalk pulling rate and the leakage rate as the evaluation indexes. The results showed that there was the most significant effect on the pulling-off rate and the leakage rate, when the belt and forward speeds were more than 0.85, and 0.8 m/s, respectively. The response surface test was carried out to obtain the best combination of operating parameters in the cotton stalk pulling equipment, where the forward speed of 0.63 m/s, the rotational speed of the toothed plate of 58.57 r/min, and the belt speed of 0.71 m/s, the pulling breakage rate and the leakage rate were 3.90% and 4.34%, respectively. The field test showed that there was the most significant effect on the pulling breakage rate and the leakage rate, when the forward speed of 0.65 m/s, the rotational speed of the toothed plate of 58 r/min, and the belt speed of 0.71 m/s, the pulling breakage rate and leakage rate of straw pulling were 3.87%, and 4.48%, respectively, the relative error was within 5% with the theoretical prediction, indicating reliable optimization. The finding can also provide a strong reference to design the whole plant pulling device.