ISHS Acta Horticulturae 319: International Symposium on Transplant Production Systems
DEVELOPMENT OF TRAY STACKER AND DESTACKER FOR VEGETABLE SEEDLING PRODUCTION |
| Authors: | S. Chen, Y. Chu, C. Chang |
| Abstract:
Vegetable seedling production is an important sector in entire vegetable production system in Taiwan. Plug system becomes more and more popular in the seedling industry, as a result, pneumatic seeders using plug trays were developed to meet part of the local needs. However, the work required to supply and to stack trays is laborious and counts for the major share of the labor cost in seeding operations. In this study, tray destacker and stacker were designed to save the labor and improve the efficiency of the operations. The tray destacker is an automatic tray feeding system, it provides trays to seeding unit at a given time interval. A programmable logic controller was used to execute the control algorithm. Air cylinders with sensors were carefully arranged to perform the procedures of lifting and intercepting trays. Specially designed interceptors were used to provide singulated trays. The tray stacker is also an automatic system for piling of trays. A programmable logic controller, air cylinders, sensors and specially designed graspers were integrated to perform the tray stacking after the seeding. These two machines may be adjusted to fit many sizes of trays. The destacker and stacker were tested with several types of trays, results showed an excellent performance and a wide range of applications in the seedling production industry. | |
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