Fabrication and Evaluation of Vacuumed metering drum Performance for row planting of Soybean with Grease Belt

Abstract

In this study, a vacuumed metering drum was fabricated under special vacuum pressure for the cultivation of soybean seeds DPX and it was evaluated by grease belt machine. In order to evaluate this metering drum, the speed of planter was assessed with three levels of 0.5, 1 and 1.5 ms^-1 and three levels of metering drum vacuum pressures of 980, 1180 and 1380 Pa with two seed-separating methods (mechanical and pneumatic) in three replications.  In this study, the effects of in-cylinder vacuum pressure and speed of planter’s forward movement on the filling percentage, multi-seed, non-planting, deviation from planting line, and uniform distribution of seed were assessed. The results of the test were examined in the form of a factorial experiment with a completely random design and comparison of means was performed by LSD test in SAS software. The results indicated that when the vacuum pressure was increased or the speed of planter was reduced, the filling percentage was increased. The filling percentage and multi- planting were increased with the increase of pressure and multi- planting was reduced with reduction of speed. The in-cylinder pressure and speed of planter have no effect on the rate of deviation from the planting line, and uniform distribution of seeds was done better in the lower pressure and speed. Moreover, the performance of this metering drum equipped with the pneumatic separator was better than mechanical separator in all parameters.