Design and Experimental Study of Seedling Tray Handling Device

Producing seedlings in a plant factory possesses the qualities of easy administration, which can provide healthy seedling resources for agricultural production. Due to the height and structural limitations of the cultivation frame, manual handling of seedling trays not only requires more physical strength but also increases the risk of accidents. This study created an automatic seedling tray handling device to address this issue. It can adjust the length of the bottom guiding mechanism and the height of the lifting mechanism based on the height and quantity of stereoscopic culture bed frames. The designed vertical lifting mechanism and tray pushing mechanism can transport the seedling trays to each layer of the stereoscopic seedling bed frame. The static analysis of the seedling tray support plate was carried out using Ansys software. Experimental results showed that the maximum deformation is 0.68mm, which can meet the design requirements. Through the analysis of the height positioning deviation in the vertical direction and the positioning error of the propulsion mechanism, it is concluded that the height of the seedling tray to be lifted when it is propelled should be higher than the upper surface of the water tank by 5mm; under the setting of the primary propulsion speed of 250mm/s and the secondary propulsion speed of 60mm/s, the average success rate of seedling tray conveying is 96.7% The overall design can satisfy the requirements of the work of seedling tray conveying.