JPH0362361B2 - - Google Patents

Description

[Detailed Description of the Invention] (Industrial Application Field) The present invention relates to a transplanter that grows seedlings in a paper tube, and its purpose is to raise seedlings that can be used even if the supplied seedlings include defective seedlings that do not germinate. The aim is to detect only those plants and plant them at regular intervals.

(Conventional technology) Paper tube seedlings are grown by sowing seeds in paper tubes gathered in a honeycomb shape, but it is impossible to completely remove defective seeds that do not germinate during sowing, and some paper tube seedlings do not germinate. There are defective seedlings. Therefore, if you plant them all as is, they will be missing and the yield will be reduced, so it is necessary to manually select and plant them, or
Either use a sorting device as described in No. 4,215,513 to plant only good seedlings, or, as described in U.S. Pat. When defective seedlings are detected, a push-out device is activated to eject them out of the system and only good seedlings are supplied to the planting ring and planted, or the US Patent No.
As in No. 4289080, continuous soiled seedlings are transported through piping, and a micro switch is installed near the piping outlet.
The detection end is placed facing the leaf transport path of soiled seedlings. When good seedlings are being fed continuously, each seedling is fed at a specified pitch, and when defective seedlings are mixed, only that part is fed. There is a known device that quickly plants only good seedlings at regular intervals.

(Problems to be Solved by the Invention) In all of the above inventions, only good seedlings are planted at predetermined intervals, but manual selection requires a lot of labor and soil parts may fall off during the work. The method of Japanese Patent Publication No. 55-28650 is labor-saving and efficient, but it requires an expensive sorting device, and its installation increases the weight of the transplanting machine considerably. The method of US Pat. No. 4,215,513 can select seedlings with independent leaves, but if they grow long, the leaves become intertwined and difficult to detect. Also, US Patent No.
The method of No. 4289080 also has the disadvantage that detection becomes difficult if leaves become entangled, and if the detection end collides with the next leaf in a fast-moving state, it damages the leaf. As described above, conventional devices have some drawbacks, and there is still no known device that is inexpensive, can reliably detect even leaf-tangled seedlings, and can reliably transplant only good seedlings.

(Means for Solving the Problems) The present invention was made in view of the above circumstances, and as a result of research to ensure that only good seedlings are transplanted at regular intervals using an inexpensive and lightweight device, Focusing on the fact that if seedlings are fed to the planting disk at a high speed, they will fall over, and even if they are transplanted between good seedlings, they will not be overwhelmed by the growth of good seedlings and will not get in the way. The leaves are separated and arranged side by side on a conveyor that rotates laterally, and a pair of long and short conveyors that rotate more quickly in the vertical direction are installed at the conveying end of the conveyor, and the leaves are held and transferred with the leaves protruding. At the lower end of the seedling transfer conveyor, a pair of planting disks are used to sandwich the protruding portion for planting, and a sensor is provided at the bottom of the seedling transfer conveyor to detect the protruding seedling leaves. A rotary encoder is installed on the shaft that interlocks with the planting disk, and each signal is input to the control device, and the transferred seedlings are fast-forwarded and stopped at the sensor position, and the pulses of the rotary encoder reach a predetermined number. This problem was solved by creating a device in which each conveyor is first rotated at a slow speed to feed the seedlings to the planting disk, and then rotated at a high speed until the next seedling is detected.

(Function) When the row of paper tube seedlings on the horizontal conveyor is sent to the conveying end, the most advanced paper tube seedling collides with the faster-rotating seedling transfer conveyor, increasing the distance between it and the next paper tube seedling. It is transported downward in an expanded state and with the leaf portions protruding. A seedling detection device is provided at the bottom of the seedling transfer conveyor, and since there is a considerable distance between the paper tube seedlings P, detection is performed reliably. The detection signal is input to the control device and the transverse feed conveyor and seedling transfer conveyor are stopped, but even if defective seedlings are sent, there is no detection of leaves, so they are fast-forwarded until good seedlings are sent. In addition, the pulses of the rotary encoder are also input to the control device, and when the count reaches a predetermined value, that is, when the disk planting device rotates by a predetermined angle and the transplanter moves by a predetermined planting distance, the clutch of the seedling transfer conveyor is engaged and the seedling transfer conveyor is engaged. The seedlings are transported at a slow speed equal to the circumferential speed of the planting disk, and the protruding portion of the paper cylinder seedling is held in the planting disk and released by itself. Next, when the number of pulses reaches a set value, a fast-forwarding clutch is engaged and the seedlings are transferred at a speed of 2 to 5 times, and the seedlings that have been rapidly separated and transferred reach the position of the seedling detection device and are stopped. At this time, defective seedlings are not detected and are passed to the planting disk at high speed, but because the circumferential speed is significantly different, they are not held in a normal state and lie in a lying state after planting. Therefore, only good seedlings can be planted at regular intervals.

(Example) Fig. 1 shows an example of a transplanter equipped with the device of the present invention. In the figure, 1 indicates a machine frame, with mounting holes etc. provided in the front and the machine being towed by a tractor or the like and moving in the direction of the arrow. A seedling stand 2 is installed above the machine frame 1 to hold seedlings P grown using paper, etc.
is mounted, a seedling supply belt 3 is stretched in front of it, and paper tube seedlings P are obtained or separated into rows by a seedling row separating device (not shown) and placed on the seedling supply belt 3. A seedling holding ring 4 is provided above the seedling conveying end of the seedling supply belt 3, between which the paper cylinder seedlings P are fed out, and in front of the feeding belt is a pair of long and short seedling transfer belts 5, 5 which rotate in the vertical direction. The width of the seedling feeding belt 3 is narrower than that of the seedling feeding belt 3, and is wide enough to hold the lower part of the seedlings in the paper cylinder. Also, since the seedling transfer belts 5, 5 are always rotated faster than the seedling supply belt 3, the paper cylinder seedlings P fed out between the seedling supply belt 3 and the seedling presser ring 4 are transferred to the long seedling transfer belt 5. The seedlings are separated into individual seedlings, which are held between a short belt 5 and transferred downward. The transferred paper tube seedlings P reach a pair of planting discs 6, 6 that rotate in the direction of movement of the machine body, and the protruding portions are held between them and the inside of the opener 7 below the machine frame 1 is held at about 90 degrees. It can be rotated and planted. These devices are driven by a gearbox 8, which contains many transmissions, and the transmissions are driven in conjunction with a suppression wheel 9 provided at the rear of the machine frame 1. For this purpose, a chain 12 is connected to a sprocket 11 fixed to the shaft 10 of the suppression wheel 9, and interlocked with the sprocket 14 fixed to the shaft 13 of the planting disk 6, so that the rotation of the shaft 13 is caused by the large bevel teeth 15 and the intermediate shaft 16. A small fixed bevel gear 17 is used to rotate the device inside the gearbox by means of an intermediate shaft 16.

The details of the present invention are shown in FIG. 2 and below. A driving chain wheel 18 is fixed to the intermediate shaft 16, and a rotary encoder 19 is arranged at the end of the shaft to measure the rotation of the shaft 16. As is well known, since the rotary encoder counts pulses generated by rotation, this value corresponds to the rotation angle of the planting discs 6, 6 which are interlocked with the shaft 16. Incidentally, the rotary encoder of the present invention means such a measuring device.

The drive chain wheel 18 is connected to a shaft 21 via a chain 20.
The clutch chain wheel 22 is interlocked with the clutch chain wheel 22.
drives the shaft 21 via the electromagnetic clutch 23.
The chain wheel 24 of the shaft 21 drives a small chain wheel 27 of the shaft 26 via a chain 25, and the shaft 26 is provided with a large chain wheel 28 and a ratchet chain wheel 29.
The large chain wheel 33 of the shaft 30 drives the rapid chain wheel 36 of the rotating shaft 35 of the seedling transfer belt 5 through the chain 34, and the ratchet chain wheel of the shaft 26 29 drives the slow chain wheel 37 on the shaft 35. The rapid traverse chain wheel 36 is attached to the shaft 35 via an electromagnetic clutch 38, and when the electromagnetic clutch 38 operates, the shaft 35 rotates at high speed due to the rapid traverse chain wheel 36, but when it does not operate, the shaft 35 is driven by the ratchet chain wheel 29. Rotates slowly.
This slow speed is determined by the circumferential speed of the seedling transfer belt 5 and the planting disk 6,
It is preferable that the circumferential speeds of No. 6 and 6 are approximately equal, and the high speed is approximately 2 to 5 times the slow speed. Furthermore, the gear 39 fixed to the shaft 35 meshes with the gear 41 fixed to the shaft 40 of the seedling transfer belt 5 on the other side and rotates in opposite directions. Further, the small chain wheel 42 fixed to the end of the shaft 35 drives the large chain wheel 45 of the drive shaft 44 of the seedling supply belt 3 through the chain 43, causing the seedling supply belt 3 to rotate more slowly. 46
meshes with the gear 49 of the shaft 48 of the seedling holding ring 4 and rotates them in opposite directions.

At the bottom of the seedling transfer belts 5, 5, a sensor 50 faces each other, sandwiching the trajectory of the paper tube seedling P passing through the teeth. 52 so that it can be input. The output side of the control device 51 is connected to the electromagnetic clutches 23, 38. Further, when the sensor 50 detects a seedling, the control device 51 sends a command to the electromagnetic clutch 23 to release the engagement of the clutch chain wheel 22, and when the count value of the rotary encoder 19 reaches a predetermined value, the control device 51 releases the engagement of the clutch chain wheel 22. When engaged, the shaft 35 is rotated by the ratchet chain wheel 29, and when a predetermined value is reached, the electromagnetic clutch 38 is actuated to idle the clutch chain wheel 22 and set to rotate quickly. Therefore, when the sensor 50 detects a seedling, the seedling supply belt 3 and the seedling transfer belts 5, 5 stop. At this time, since the planting disks 6, 6 are rotating, the intermediate shaft 16 constantly rotates, and the rotary encoder 19 also rotates. Therefore, a pulse signal is always input from the rotary encoder 19 to the control device 51 and counted by the counter 52. This count is set to a desired value, for example 50, according to the planting interval, that is, the rotation angle of the planting discs 6, 6, and when that value is reached, the electromagnetic clutch 23 is activated, and the seedling supply belt 3 and the seedling transfer The belts 5, 5 are rotated at a slow speed by a ratchet chain wheel 29 to transfer the seedlings P to the planting disk. Then, when a predetermined number of pulses have been counted (eg, 10), the electromagnetic clutch 38 is actuated and rotates at high speed. As a result, the seedling supply belt 3 and the seedling transfer belts 5, 5 rotate at high speed during the difference 40, during which time the paper tube seedlings P are separated and transferred, and when good seedlings P are sent to the position of the sensor 50, the signal is controlled. The electromagnetic clutches 23 and 38 are inputted to the device 51 and stop conveying the cut seedlings and wait. If a defective seedling P' is sent, the sensor 50 will not detect it, so the seedling will be transported until a good seedling P is sent. Even if the conveying devices 3 and 5 are stopped, the planting wheel 6 is still rotating, so a puzzle occurs, and when the counter 52 reaches the predetermined number +1, the seedling feeding starts. The sent seedlings P are held between the planting disks 6, 6 as described above and are planted in the main field.

(Effects) The present invention is as described above, and the seedlings P with good leaves are transported via the fast-forwarding mechanism, detected by the sensor 50, and waited at that position, and then slowly moved to the planting disk 6,
6, so it can be planted in the correct posture. However, defective seedlings P′ without leaves are fed to the planting discs 6 and 6 at high speed, and due to the difference in circumferential speed, it becomes impossible to transfer them, or even if they are held, they are held in an oblique position. , when the planting disk is released into the main field, it will fall over and be buried by the subsequent suppression wheel. For this reason, good seedlings P are always planted at regular intervals according to the predetermined number of pulses, but even if bad seedlings P' are planted and germinate later, they will not grow because they are overwhelmed by good seedlings, and the growth of good seedlings will not be hindered. It's something that doesn't exist.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

Fig. 1 is a side view of a transplanter equipped with the device of the present invention, Fig. 2 is a detailed view of the gearbox, Fig. 3 is a side view of the main parts of the device of the present invention, and Fig. 4 is an explanatory diagram of the control device. It is. 3... Seedling supply belt, 5... Seedling transfer belt, 1
6... Intermediate shaft, 19... Rotary encoder, 22... Clutch chain wheel, 23, 38... Electromagnetic clutch, 29... Ratchet chain wheel, 37... Slow feed chain wheel, 36... Rapid feed chain wheel, 50...sensor, 51...control device.

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1 Equipped with a conveyor that closely conveys the paper tube seedlings, a pair of seedling transfer conveyors that separate the paper tube seedlings from the conveyor and transfer them in the vertical direction, and a pair of planting disks that receive the paper tube seedlings from the seedling transfer conveyor. A seedling detection device is provided at the bottom of the seedling transfer conveyor, and a rotary encoder is provided on the shaft that interlocks with the planting disk, and the respective signals are input to the control device. A missing stock correction device that stops the conveyance of the rotary encoder, and when the pulse of the rotary encoder reaches a predetermined number, conveys the plant at a slow speed for a fixed number of pulses, and then conveys it at a high speed.