Design and development of seedling transplanter, part 3 - design of plough system and in-charge of design consolidation

Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) has approached Nanyang Technological University (NTU) to design and develop a seedling transplanter, in order to improve the "Seed Plugs" method for the local Singapore farm. The main objectives are to reduce the manpower requirement and improve seedling planting productivity. This assignment was introduced to the design team through MP4011, Mechanical System Design and Analysis in Semester 2 Academic Year 2012-2013. During the course, the team presented a solution showing how a customize machine can solve the issues through a course report. After reviewing the report, AVA is very keen to implement this solution. They decided to fund the design team as an industrial sponsored project and ask for the machine to be built. In this project, a seedling transplanter similar to a garden push cart was developed and built. The operating envelope of current local farm poses a great challenge on the construction of the machine layout during the design stage. Planting plots of local farms are closely arranged and we need to design a machine not bigger than a size with length of 1.5 meter by width of 1.2 meter so that this machine can maneuver within the plots. After a series of brainstorming sessions and reviews with the supervisor, the team was able to incorporate the Storage System, Dislodging System, Feeding System, Transfer System, Plough System and Planting System all in one machine. The current practice of local farmers is to remove all seedlings from the seed plug tray at an off-line station before transferring them to the plot for planting. After reviewing this process, the team felt that this operation should be improved. The pulling action on the seedling and transferring it to basket are slowing down the whole planting process. Manually pulling of seedling also reduces the production yield. There was a breakthrough of this paradigm shield and we eliminate this old practice. A new Dislodging System was introduced in the machine and it plays an important role in increasing the planting productivity. Another system that excites the end user is the Storage System. This new machine can hold up to 10 seed plug trays. This allows the user to plant 1280 seedlings with a single loading on the machine. New seedling transplanter changes the habit of handling the seedling and helps in improving productivity. We hope to implement this seedling tranplanter across the island; hence increase the local leafy vegetable supply. Process development of the seedling transplanter is presented in this report.Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical Engineering