Development of Rotary Type Transplanting Device for Vegetable Transplanter

Vegetable transplanting operation has been wholly depended on human labor that needs 18.4 hrs per 10 acres in Korea. Since periods of vegetable transplanting operations are limited, their mechanization has been strongly demanded. This study was conducted to develop a transplanting device that was the core technology for vegetable transplanter. In order to find out transplanting track and velocity of transplanting device, a kinematic analysis software was employed. Evaluation of prototype was carried out in the circular soil bin with high speed camera. Rotary type transplanting device produced an elliptic loci when two links of different lengths were moving to the opposite direction. The length of two links was 75mm and 44mm, respectively. Maximum displacement of rotary type transplanting device was 238mm. It seemed that the transplanting elliptic loci of transplanting device were identical between the simulation output generated by kinematic analysis software and the circular soil bin test result with a high speed camera. The rotary type transplanting device can be suitable fur transplanting short height vegetable, less than 20 cm length vegetables such as Chinese cabbage and cabbage, etc.