Justification of a finger device for feeding sesame plants into harvester

Abstract

The objective of the study is giving proof of a technological scheme and the basic parameters of a new device for feeding sesame plants into the harvesting machine at reduced seed scattering. The kinematics of the point of contact between the plant and a finger of the feeder conveyor has been investigated. The laws for the displacement and the velocitty of that point have been synthesized. They have been used to determine the displacement of the contact point on the stem, the kinematic factor of the conveyors, and also to calculate the position of the knife to the point of initial contact of fingers with the plant. The operation of the new device requires adjusting the longitudinal slope of the conveyors from 0° to 10° and their kinematic factor of 1.1 to 1.5. To ensure a sufficient slope of the stem over the header in the moment of cutting is necessary to adjust the distance of the blade to point of initial contact with fingers from 0.05 to 0.30 m. The expressions obtained can be used to determine the basic parameters of a finger device for feeding sesame stems in a harvesting machine as well as for manufacturing a sesame header for grain harvesters.