Design and Test of Automatic Feeding Device for Shed Pole of Small-Arched Insertion Machine

• Published in: Agriculture (Basel) Vol. 14; no. 7; p. 1187
• Main Authors: Chen, Xiao, Hu, Jianling, Gong, Yan, Yu, Qingxu, Wang, Zhenwei, Deng, Xiaozhong, Pang, Xinguo
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 01.07.2024
• Subjects: Agriculture; automatic feeder for shed poles; Casting inserts; Casting machines; Design; Design factors; Design of experiments; Design parameters; Efficiency; Error analysis; Experimental design; Greenhouses; Horticulture; Liu Ping; Mechanization; parameter optimization; Poles; Regression models; small-arched shed; small-arched shed-building machinery; Variance analysis; United States > US; China
• ISSN: 2077-0472; 2077-0472
• DOI: 10.3390/agriculture14071187

China’s small-arched shed-building machinery mostly adopts manual pole casting and mechanical planting, which have low building efficiency and mechanization. Therefore, we designed an automatic feeding device for shed poles to realize automatic single separation, orderly conveyance and timely dropping of poles. Considering shed pole-pitching pass rate as the evaluation index for the regression model, we adopted a three-factor, three-level experimental design and established the speed of the reclaiming ring, height of the falling shed poles and reclaiming ring spacing as the main influencing factors, obtaining 23.94 r/min, 408.799 mm and 1350 mm, respectively in experiments with a trellis qualification rate of 95.36%. Design-Expert 13 was used to perform analysis of variance and determine the optimal parameter combinations. The average measured trellis qualification rate in tests with the bench adjusted and the optimal parameter combination was 94.23%, with 1.13% relative error between test and theoretical optimization values. This confirmed the optimal parameter combination’s dependability. In field verification test results, pick-up card ring speed was 24 r/min; height of trellis pole drop, 410 mm; pick-up card ring spacing, 1350 mm; and pitching rate, 95.37%, obtaining 0.01% error compared with theoretically optimized values. The prototype operational performance was stable and satisfied design requirements.