DESIGN AND EXPERIMENT OF SMALL VEGETABLE SEEDER WITH SINGLE DISC MULTI-ROW SEEDING AND INDEPENDENT AIRWAY

In this paper, a small pneumatic vegetable precision seeder suitable for facility greenhouses was designed. Based on the traditional positive and negative pressure seed-metering device, the airway disc structure was designed, and the negative pressure air chamber was divided into three separate air chambers. The separate air chambers could solve the problems of high-pressure requirements of traditional seed-metering device with large air chamber and suitable for small power machineries more. One, two, or three rows drill can be completed by replacing the seed plate and divider. The seed discharge process of the seed-metering device was analyzed and the bench test was performed. Results showed that the required pressure of the seedmetering device with the airway disk was 1 kPa less than traditional seed-metering device with large air chamber when the eligible rate of seed discharge was 95%. Field experiments were performed, results showed that the best performance were achieved under the speed of 3 km/h, for 3.72 % missed, 1.93% repeat and 94.35 % of inner ring, and 5.72%, 1.87% and 92.41% respectively of outer, meeting the requirements for vegetable seeding.