Design and Experiment of Progressive Seed-Cleaning Mechanism for Air-Pressure Maize Precision Seed-Metering Device

Abstract

In order to improve the sowing performance of air-pressure maize dense planting high-speed precision seed-metering device and reduce the occurrence of multiple and missed seeds phenomenon, a seed-cleaning mechanism with progressive seed scraper was designed. The structure and working principle of the seed-metering device and seed-cleaning mechanism are described, the mechanical model before and after the excess seed enters the seed cleaning area is established, and the design parameters of the key components of the seed-cleaning mechanism are determined through the method of theoretical analysis. The experiments of single-factor and multi-factor are conducted with seed clearing angle, operating speed, positive pressure value of blower as influencing factors, and with qualified index, miss index, multiple index as the experimental indexes. The results show that the optimal seed-clearing performance parameter combination of the seed-cleaning mechanism is seed-clearing angle of 0.024°, operating speed of 10 km/h, positive pressure value of 6.0 kPa, verification test of the parameter combination of the qualified index of 98.11%, multiple index of 1.44%, miss index of 0.45%. In the comparative experiment, the qualified index of the device with seed-cleaning mechanism increased by about 2.3% compared to the device without seed-cleaning mechanism, and the multiple index decreased by about 2.2%. The seed-cleaning mechanism is reasonably designed to meet the seed clearing operation requirements of air-pressure maize dense planting high-speed precision seed-metering device.