Design and experiment of household clamping sunflower shelling mechanism

Aiming at the problems of poor integrity, low hulling efficiency and high kernel crushing rate of the existing household sunflower hulling machine, a household clamping sunflower hulling mechanism was designed in this paper, taking the first-stage ripe sunflower (length L ≥ 20 mm, width W ≥ 8 mm) as the research object. The mechanism utilizes SolidWorks to construct a three-dimensional model and adopts a roller-squeezing shelling technical solution. By arranging the clamping wheel and the shelling roller in a 90°staggered configuration and integrating an adaptive adjustment mechanism based on compression springs, the shelling gap can be adjusted in real time according to the width of sunflower seeds, ensuring stable processing of seeds of different sizes. This achieves coordinated operation of clamping along the thickness direction and shelling along the width direction of sunflower seeds. In order to optimize the hulling performance, Box-Behnken response surface methodology was used to analyze the factors and their interaction. The rotational speed ratio (A, 0.8-1.2), clamping gap (B, 3-4 mm) and hulling gap (C, 7-8 mm) were taken as experimental factors, and hulling rate and kernel breakage rate were taken as evaluation indexes. The results showed that the order of influence of each factor on hulling rate and kernel crushing rate was C (hulling gap) > B (clamping gap) > A (rotation speed ratio), and in interaction, B and C had significant influence on hulling rate, A and B, B and C had significant influence on kernel crushing rate. Under the boundary conditions, the optimum parameters were obtained as follows: rotational speed ratio 1, clamping gap 3 mm, shelling gap 8 mm. At this time, the shelling rate was 86.32%, and the kernel crushing rate was 6.88%.