CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is a National Stage Application of International Application Number PCT/CN2018/096739, filed Jul. 24, 2018; which claims priority to Chinese Application Nos. 201810105734.4, filed Feb. 2, 2018, and 201810757620.8, filed Jul. 11, 2018.

TECHNICAL FIELD

The invention relates to the field of agricultural machinery, in particular to a plug-tray seedling automatic transplanting machine and control method thereof.

BACKGROUND ART

Vegetables are an indispensable kind of food in life. China's vegetable planting area has reached 300 million mu, the annual output of vegetable exceeds 700 million tons, and continues to grow. China is the largest vegetable producing and consuming country in the world. At present, the cultivation of agricultural vegetables in China mostly adopts the method of first breeding seedlings in plug-tray and then transplanting for cultivation, which can make vegetables avoid natural disasters such as drought and cold damage during seedling breeding period. It also can make full use of light and heat resources, and has the effects of climate compensation and early maturing and yield increase of crops. This method has enormous economic and social benefits. Therefore, the development of a fully automatic vegetable transplanting machine which is suitable for China's national conditions has become a prerequisite for large-scale planting of vegetables.

At present, the transplanting machines on the market are divided into two types: semi-automatic and fully automatic. The semi-automatic transplanting machine needs to manually pick seedlings from the plug-tray and drop seedlings. This transplanting machine has high labor intensity and low efficiency. The fully automatic transplanting machine integrates advanced integrated technology of machine, electricity, liquid and gas, which can realize automatic vegetable transplanting in the whole process of picking seedling, dropping seedling, planting and covering soil, with low labor intensity and high efficiency. In the existing technology, Chinese patent publication No. 106358537A discloses a plug-tray seedling automatic transplanting machine and control system thereof. The transplanting machine and its control system adopt a swinging seedling picking mechanism, and seedlings are picked at intervals and six seedlings are picked at one time, thereby realizing uninterrupted plug-tray supply and seedling picking. However, it is necessary to finish picking a row of seedlings in twice, the plug-tray needs to be moved vertically and laterally, as a result, the efficiency is low. After the plug-tray is in place, the seedling claws are inserted from the above of the seedling pot, and the leaves and stems of the seedlings are greatly damaged. As the seedlings are dropped in sequence, and the seedling separating mechanism receives the seedlings during moving. When the speed is relative faster, it is easy to produce problems such as hanging seedlings and poor posture of seedling dropping. There is only one set of seedling picking mechanism and seedling separating mechanism, which cannot meet the requirements of different crops with different row spacing during transplanting.

Content of Invention

In view of deficiencies of the existing technology, the invention provides a plug-tray seedling automatic transplanting machine and control method thereof, which can realize picking an entire row of seedlings without interval and dropping seedlings at the same time, and the problems brought by picking seedlings at interval and dropping seedlings in sequence that it is difficult to control the time for dropping seedlings and the success rate is low are overcome. The plug-tray only needs to be vertically transported and moved, thereby improving the efficiency of plug-tray transport, picking seedling and dropping seedling. By changing the number of seedling claws, it can be adapted to 72 holes, 128 holes and other kinds of plug-trays. The seedling claws reach the seedling picking point at first, and then the whole row of seedlings is transferred via translation to the below of the seedling claws to pick the seedlings, so that the seedling claws can comb the seedlings in the pot before being inserted into the pot, and the adjacent leaves of the pot seedlings which are staggered together can be separated. It overcomes the phenomenon of clipping seedlings and damaging seedlings when the existing seedling claws are directly inserted into the pot from above of the pot seedlings to pick seedlings, which reduces damage to pot seedlings and improves seedling picking quality. The seedling guiding device receives the seedlings statically and shortens the free-falling movement distance, so that the dropping of seedlings is more accurate. There are two sets of seedling picking, seedling dropping, seedling separating and planting devices, which can meet requirements of different crops with different row spacing when transplanting.

The invention achieves the above technical objects by the following technical means.

A plug-tray seedling automatic transplanting machine, including a chassis bracket, a planting mechanism, seedling guiding devices, seedling separating mechanisms, and a power mechanism, the power mechanism is installed on the chassis bracket for powering the transplanting machine; characterized in that, the machine further includes a box shifting mechanism, a seedling picking mechanism and a control system, the box shifting mechanism is installed on the chassis bracket, the seedling picking mechanism is installed on the box shifting mechanism, and two sets of seedling separating mechanism are symmetrically arranged on both sides of the box shifting mechanism through the chassis bracket, the seedling guiding devices are provided above each set of the seedling separating mechanism, and the planting mechanism is provided under each set of the seedling separating mechanism; the control system controls the power mechanism, the planting mechanisms, the seedling separating mechanisms, the box shifting mechanism, and the seedling picking mechanism;

the box shifting mechanism includes a plug-tray, a position proximity switch, a plug-tray recovery device, a box shifting bracket, and a conveying device, the conveying device is installed on the chassis bracket by the box shifting bracket; the plug-tray is placed on the conveying device, the conveying device is provided with the plug-tray recovery device at the end of the moving direction; the position proximity switch is installed on the box shifting bracket for judging whether the plug-tray has reached the pre-picking point, and transmitting the signal to the control system, the control system controls operation of the conveying device;

the seedling picking mechanism includes a first linear guiderail pair, a seedling picking bracket, movable seedling claw devices, the second actuator limit blocks, a first actuator, a bottom plate, a second linear guiderail pair, a second actuator, a first travel switch group and a second travel switch group; the seedling picking bracket is fixed on the box shifting bracket, the first actuator is installed on the seedling picking bracket, the pull rod of the first actuator is connected to the bottom plate, and the bottom plate is connected to the seedling picking bracket through the first linear guiderail pair, the bottom plate is moved up and down by the first actuator; the bottom plate is connected to two movable seedling claw devices through the second linear guiderail pair, the second linear guiderail pair is arranged in a horizontal direction; each movable seedling claw device is connected to the second actuator, several second actuator limit blocks are provided on the bottom plate located near the seedling picking point and the seedling dropping point, the movable seedling claw device moves between the seedling picking point and the seedling dropping point by means of the second actuator and the second actuator limit block; the first travel switch group is installed near the first linear guiderail pair for judging whether the bottom plate reaches a predetermined position, and the second travel switch group is installed near the second linear guiderail pair for judging whether the movable seedling claw device reaches the predetermined position; the signals are transmitted to the control system respectively by the first travel switch group and the second travel switch group, the control system controls the movement of the first actuator, the second actuator, and the movable seedling claw device.

Furthermore, the movable seedling claw device includes springs, seedling claw spacers, seedling claws, and screw rods, several seedling claws are installed on the bottom plate through the second linear guiderail pair; stop blocks are arranged on both sides of the screw rods, and two adjacent seedling claws are installed on the screw rod between the two stop blocks, the screw rod is covered with a spring, the spring is located between the two adjacent seedling claws; any one of the seedling claws at the two ends of the linearly-arranged seedling claws are connected to the second actuator; the seedling claws are provided with seedling claw spacers, when the second actuator moves, the seedling claw spacers make the distance between the adjacent seedling claws the same as the distance between the holes of the plug-tray, and the center of the seedling claw is coaxial with the center of the hole of the plug-tray.

Furthermore, seedling separating cups are arranged in the seedling separating mechanisms in a circular shape, and a travel switch is installed on the seedling separating mechanism for detecting the number of turned separating cups.

Furthermore, the seedling guiding device includes inclined seedling guiding barrels, a seedling guiding device bracket, inclined seedling guiding barrel clasps, vertical seedling guiding barrel clasps, and vertical seedling guiding barrels; the seedling guiding device bracket is installed on the seedling separating mechanism, the vertical seedling guiding barrel clasps and the inclined seedling guiding barrel clasps are respectively installed on the seedling guiding device bracket, the vertical seedling guiding barrels are installed in the vertical seedling guiding barrel clasps, the inclined seedling guiding barrels are installed in the inclined seedling guiding barrel clasps, and the seedling guiding outlets of the vertical seedling guiding barrels and the inclined seedling guiding barrels are in one-to-one correspondence with the seedling separating cups in the seedling separating mechanism.

Furthermore, the first actuator and the second actuator are both double-acting cylinders; it further includes a gas source FRL and a pressure sensor, the gas source FRL is installed on the seedling picking bracket, one end of the gas source FRL is connected to gas source, and the other end is connected in parallel with the first actuator and the second actuator; solenoid valves are disposed on each of the first actuator and the second actuator.

Furthermore, it also includes a gas storage tank, a clutch device, and an air compressor pump head; the air compressor is coupled to the power mechanism for generating compressed gas; one end of the gas storage tank is connected to the air compressor pump head, and the other end is connected to the gas source FRL;

the clutch device includes a pump head mount, a clutch handle, a positioning ball, a positioning spring, a connecting piece and guiding strips; two guiding strips are installed in parallel on the chassis bracket, the air compressor pump head is installed on the pump head mount, the pump head mount is located between the two guiding strips, and the pump head mount can be moved along the guiding strips; the clutch handle is rotatably installed on the chassis bracket, the bottom of the clutch handle is provided with a first blind hole, the positioning ball and the positioning spring are placed in the first blind hole, and the positioning spring is located above the positioning ball, one end of the connecting piece is rotatably installed on the pump head mount, and the other end is rotatably installed on the clutch handle, the chassis bracket is provided with a second blind hole and a third blind hole, the second blind hole, the third blind hole and the first blind hole are at the same distance from the center of the clutch handle.

A control method of plug-tray seedling automatic transplanting machine, including the following steps:

S1: the plug-tray is placed on the conveying device of the box shifting mechanism, at this time the seedling claws of the two sets of seedling claw devices are located above the seedling guiding device and are concentric with the seedling guiding barrels; the control system starts the conveying device to transport the plug-tray to the pre-picking point and stops the movement of the conveying device according to the signal output from the position proximity switch;

S2: the second actuator is activated, and the control system controls the movement of the movable seedling claw device to the picking point according to the signal output by the second travel switch group; each of the seedling claws is located above the first row of holes of the plug-tray, and the center of the hole is concentric with each of the seedling claws;

S3: the control system activates the conveying device to transport the plug-tray to the picking point according to the signal output by the second travel switch group; the control system controls the first actuator to insert the movable seedling claw device into the pot seedling, and at the same time, according to the signal generated by the first travel switch group, the seedling claw is controlled to clamp the pot seedling;

S4: the control system controls the first actuator to drive the movable seedling claw device to pull out the pot seedling; the control system controls the second actuator to drive the movable seedling claw device to move to the dropping point;

S5: assuming the plug-tray has N holes in each row, and there are M rows in total, the control system controls the seedling separating mechanism to rotate, when the seedling separating cups trigger the travel switch for N/2 times, according to the signals generated by the second travel switch group and the travel switch, the control system controls the seedling claws to open and drop the pot seedlings into the seedling guiding device, the pot seedlings enter the seedling separating mechanism along the vertical seedling guiding barrels and the inclined seedling guiding barrels, the seedling separating mechanism rotates the pot seedlings and transports them to the seedling dropping point and then the seedlings drop into the planting mechanism, a seedling picking and dropping cycle ends;

S6: the control system controls the second actuator to drive the movable seedling claw device to move to the picking point; the control system controls the conveying device to advance the plug-tray by the distance of one hole for the next picking and dropping cycle, after repeating the above process for M times, the control system controls the conveying device so that the plug-tray moves forward and then drops to the plug-tray recovery device.

Furthermore, step S0 is provided before the step S1, and the step sS0 is: the clutch handle is rotated, so that the positioning ball enters the third blind hole; at this time, the air compressor pump head is started and starts to deliver gas to the gas storage tank by the power mechanism; the control system detects the pressure of the gas storage tank to determine whether the air pressure reaches the desired working pressure, when the air pressure reaches the working air pressure required by the transplanting machine, the control system reaches the working condition.

The Beneficial Effects of the Invention

1. The plug-tray seedling automatic transplanting machine according to the present invention first transports the plug-tray to the seedling pre-picking point by the box shifting mechanism, and waits for the seedling claws to reach the seedling picking point, and then move the whole row of seedlings to the below of seedling claws for seedling picking. According to the present invention, the needles of the seedling claws pass through the middle of the two seedlings, separate the adjacent pot seedling leaves that are staggered together, and play a combing effect on the pot seedlings before being inserted into the pot. It overcomes the phenomenons of clipping and hurting seedlings when the existing seedling claws are inserted directly into the pot from the top of the seedlings to pick the seedlings. It reduces the damage to the seedlings and improves the quality of seedling picking.

2. The plug-tray seedling automatic transplanting machine according to the present invention can realize picking the entire row of seedlings without interval and dropping seedlings at the same time through seedling picking mechanism. It overcome the problem that it is difficult to control the time of dropping seedlings and low success rate of seedling dropping brought by picking seedlings at intervals and dropping seedlings in sequence. The plug-tray only needs to be vertically transported, which improves the efficiency of plug-tray transport, picking seedling and dropping seedling.

3. The plug-tray seedling automatic transplanting machine according to the present invention is adapted to 72 holes, 128 holes and other kinds of plug-trays through changing the number of seedling claws, thickness of seedling claw spacers.

4. The plug-tray seedling automatic transplanting machine according to the present invention can shorten the free-falling movement distance, and make the dropping of seedlings more accurate as the seedling guiding device receives the seedlings statically.

5. The plug-tray seedling automatic transplanting machine according to the present invention can change the position of the seedling dropping point through changing the position of second actuators limit block. With two independent seedling separating mechanism and seedling planting mechanism, it can adapt to the row spacing requirements of different planting.

6. The control method of plug-tray seedling automatic transplanting machine according to the present invention can adapt to different planting speeds, because the rotation speed change of the seedling separating mechanism can be fedback to the seedling picking mechanism to change time point of seedling dropping.

