Design And Research Of Tobacco Leaf Trimming Machine

Trimming leaf is an indispensable link in the process of tobacco seedling. Making some proper trim to seedling is beneficial to adjusting its growth, promoting its uniformity, helping the growth of its roots and stems, improving its strength and preventing early blossoming. There are strict requirements for trimming, for example, the trimming tools must be disinfected thoroughly before trimming; leaf pulp or pieces cannot be left on the seedbed while trimming; the seedling plates must be cleaned immediately after trimming, otherwise it may bring some harmful diseases such as black rot.At present market, there are some widely used tobacco leaf trimming machines including Plate type leaf trimming machine, Cantilever type leaf trimming machine, Knapsack type leaf trimming machine, Portable leaf trimming machine, rail type leaf trimming machine and electric heating/electric leaf trimming machine, etc. But they all use disc blades as cutting components and adopt rotary cutting method without supporting. Some of them even use walking wheels driven by motor for linear motion, in order to finish cutting feed or machine movement. And Some of them use airflow created by the disc blades or independent air blower to collect the leaf pieces into the collecting system. Although all these machines are highly efficient and energy-saving, dropping leaf pulp, splashing leaf pieces and missing cut are seriously common defects.In order to solve the problems of dropping leaf pulp, splashing leaf pieces and missing cut, the writer compared and researched several kinds of cutting processes and cutting tools, and analyzed the ways of motion and stress, power consumption, operational effectiveness and efficiency. Then a new type of tobacco leaf trimming machine has preferably been designed, thus ensured the quality of leaf trimming and reached the goals of improving efficiency and reducing energy consumption.This paper is mainly about designing and researching cutting components, leaf pieces collecting system, coordination of complete machine, etc. Selected reciprocating cutter with adjustable speed, and got the optimum ratio of cutting speed to walking speed through orthogonal test. Leaf pieces collecting system includes wind turbine, draft tube and leaf pieces collecting box; this paper proved the rationality of the design through numerical simulation of draft tube flow field through FLUENT software. The structures of the whole machine include cutting system, walking system, disinfection system and control system. This machine adopted adjustable speed motor for drive, which improved the adaptability of this machine. With independent air-sucking leaf collection system, the quality of cutting has been greatly improved, with thoroughness of leaf collection and convenience of unloading. The cut leaves are comprehensively disinfected by disinfectant spray system of adjustable spray dosage, which avoided effectively the infection of pathogens. Adopted rotatable tool bit to turn round operation, without idle travel. Thus greatly improved the working efficiency and reduced the labor intensity. Through the tests in Pengshui tobacco seedling breeding base, it proved that the new leaf trimming machine can solve the three existing problems mentioned above.This machine weighs70kg, with the length of3930mm,width of715mm, height of1230mm. The walking speed ranges within0-18m/min, cut speed0-400r/min, and wind volume of the wind turbine is3500m3/h. The disinfectant spray volume is at0-0.14L/min, the cut blade length is500mm, pitch55mm, blade length is60mm, and total power capacity is0.58kW.