Design and Experiments of Automatic Seedling Separation Device for Vegetable Substrate Block Seedling Transplanter

To address the critical challenges of low success rates and high seedling damage in automatic transplanters for vegetable substrate block seedlings, this study took cabbage substrate block seedlings as the research object and designed a silica gel wheel–synchronous belt clamping seedling separation device. An experimental platform was constructed to perform a three-factor, three-level orthogonal test, investigating the effects of the wheelbase of the silica gel wheel, the inclination angle of the conveyor belt, and the wheelbase of the silica gel wheel and the synchronous belt on seedling separation success rate and substrate block breakage rate. A quadratic regression model was established to analyze the influence of each factor on the index and to optimize the parameter combination verification test. The results showed that the seedling separation effect was better when the wheelbase of the silica gel wheel was 60.47 mm, the inclination angle of the conveyor belt was 8.67°, and the wheelbase of the silica gel wheel and seedling separation synchronous belt was 39.8 mm. The success rate of seedling separation was 90.21% and the substrate block breakage rate was 6.88% in the field verification test of this parameter combination. When the operating speed is 60 plants/min, there is a higher success rate of seedling separation and a lower substrate block breakage rate. This study explored the conditions for stable seedling separation using the seedling separation device, and provided practical reference for the study of the automatic seedling separation of substrate block seedlings.