Design of planting mechanism for garlic planter

Abstract: Garlic planters developed relatively late and its technology is not matured in the agricultural machinery. However, due to the growing demand for garlic, intensive planting of garlic has become the trend in modern agriculture. The restricting factor of garlic intensive planting is delayed garlic planting machinery development. This paper proposed two key problems of developing garlic planting machinery: garlic cloves insert vertically and the cloves face towards consistent. To solve these two problems, we designed a garlic planting mechanism which can meet the garlic agricultural cultivation requirement. Based on the study of garlic planter at home and abroad, we designed a mechanism and analyzed it in detailed according to the shape characteristics of garlic cloves. The software of Solidworks was used for modeling the mechanism and the parts were printed by 3D printer, and then the garlic cultivation mechanism was built and tested. The test bench includes mobile platform which can control the speed, stepper motor, garlic planting mechanism, bracket, soil and 10 different sizes of garlic cloves. The garlic cultivation mechanism is fixed on the mobile platform through the bracket and steeper motor is fixed on the mobile platform. The rope of garlic cultivation mechanism is winded up onto the stepper motor. Stepper motor drives the rope of garlic planting mechanism to move with the mobile platform movement and press garlic cloves into the soil. By changing the frequency of the stepper motor and the speed of the mobile platform, we observed the angle between bulbil and soil of different sizes of garlic cloves under different combination of frequency and speed variation. The experimental data showed that changing the mobile platform movement speed had little effect on the angle between cloves bulbil and the soil when the frequency of variable frequency motor was fixed. When the mobile platform movement speed was fixed, changing the frequency of variable frequency motor also had little impact on the angle. While changing the angle between the garlic planting mechanism and the ground, it had large effect on the angle. Using this planting mechanism can not only ensure the garlic camber surface toward consistently but also reduce the effect on the vertical degree of garlic cloves caused by the speed of planter. But the different sizes of garlic had a pronounced impact on this plant mechanism and need to be further optimized. When cloves insert into the soil, the garlic planting mechanism basically had no damage to cloves. This design adopts a brand-new concept and provides a new approach for designing garlic planting mechanism.