Project Tittle

Analysis The Design and Working

Principal of a Mechanical Rice
Trans-planter.
Contents:
 Problem Statement
 Theory of the mechanism
 Introduction
 Description
 Parameter
 Result
 Conclusion
 List of reference.
Problem Statement:
Rice is our staple food in our country. Cultivation is very difficult.
Especially The transplantation of young rice seedling is very difficult. It
involves working with a stooping posture in a puddled field. So, it is
necessary to mechanize this operation. A large amount of labor is needed
and a lot of time is required. In our local market machines are not available.
Some imported machines are there which is extremely expensive for the
local farmers to buy and use. Their maintenance is also hard as both and
parts and technicians are not available. In manual method the distance of
rows and column does not remain constant. It is a great problem for nurture,
fertilizing and collecting crops by machines.

Theory of the mechanism:

A planar four-bar linkage with coupler extension is the basic design of a rice
transplanter. The transplanting arm will have a linear motion which will pick
the young rice seedling from the tray and plant it into a puddled field. The
linear motion of planting arm will be obtained by the rotation of a camshaft.
Camshaft will be attached with the wheel and wheel will be in contact with
the ground. When the body of the machine will be pulled ahead by hand or a
tractor the wheal will rotate and motion will be transfer to the planting arm.
In a mechanical transplanter the finger follow a desired path of motion. A
planar four-bar linkage with all revolute pairs is chosen, as this is very
simple, a mechanism made of that may be easy to maintain and may cost
less to manufacture. The input motion is applied to the crank so that the
motion is continuous and rotary. The output motion follow a suitable path in
order to meet the requirements of a transplanter specified below. The
mechanism should have one degree of freedom and a coupler point that is
capable of making a loop may be incorporated. The planting finger will be
attached at the coupler point.
Introduction:
The rice transplanting technology is mainly two type. One is PNRT (Plot
Nursery Rice Transplantation) and other one is RDS (Rice direct Seeder).
First PNRT type rice transplanting machine was developed in Japan in 1965
for nursery rice transplanting. ‘Jethro Tull’ invented the direct seeder in
1701 to plant rice more efficiently. Before this invention, seeds were shown
by hand, by scattering them on the ground or placing them in the ground
individually. Such as rice, bean and pea seeds. Our focus is to work with the
PNRT type Machine. As our country had a lot of rain direct seeder is not
possible to use.

Bangladesh is one of the fast-growing developing country of the world with

a large number of population. Our economy largely depends on the
agriculture sector. Government has taken many projects to bring an
industrial revolution in the country in the race of industrialization our
agriculture sector has been ignored slightly. Though, the other developed
and even developing countries are using modern techniques and highly
advance technologies in agriculture to achieve mass production, we are
lagging much behind in this field. Our main food is rice. Production if rice is
much difficult and critical thing. Now a days we have some machine for
harvesting the rice but for planting rice we are still using the old labor-
intensive manual method. This is very time consuming and expensive. For
this reason, we are doing the analysis on the mechanism of rice transplanter
to understand the working principal. It will enable us to make the
development of this machine in future.

Objectives:
1. To analysis the design and working principal of a rice planting machine.
2. To collect all the numerical data and measurement of the machine.
3. To bring revolutionary success in the field of rice cultivation.
 Description:
In a mechanical transplanter the finger follow a desired path of motion The
input motion is applied to the crank so that the motion is continuous and rotary.
The output motion follow a suitable path in order to meet the requirements of a
transplanter. The mechanism has one degree of freedom and a coupler point that
is capable of making a loop may be incorporated. The planting finger will be
attached at the coupler point

Fig.01 The Sketch of self-propelled rice transplanter incorporating the new

mechanism. (1) Transmission case, (2) engine, (3) ground wheel shaft, (4) side
clutch, (5) planter crank shaft, (6) handle, (7) finger assembly, (8) crank, (9)
coupler link, (10) tray, (11) seedling pusher, (12) ground wheel, (13) fuel tank and
(14) float.
Figure of transplanting arm that picks the seedling and plat it into the field.

Observations on the preliminarystudyof the mechanism designed in Stage 1

1. A scale dimension of 10 cm to 1.00 unit in the above mechanism will be
suitable considering the size of rice seedlings. This will give a vertical distance of
35 cm from the tray to the point of planting. Geometrical shape of the finger arm
part of coupler extension
2. The crank pin passes through a lowermost point E during its rotation. The
follower is pivoted at the fixed point D. If we can arrange the mechanism such that
these two points have equal elevation from the ground it may be possible to get the
maximum clearance of the entire mechanism from the ground.
3. The mechanism can be arranged such that seedlings are picked at K and planted
at L. After planting, the finger returns through a separate path. It may be noted that
the finger during the return travel does not disturb the planted seedlings. The
direction of crank rotation is choosen accordingly.
4. Superimposition of forward speed of travel on the movement of finger resulted
in a path of motion as shown in Fig. It was noted that the path of the finger during
planting was affected most. Instead of a 180 return path soon after planting, there
was either a loop or a curved path depending on the direction of forward travel.
5. A small change in the length of the coupler extension link or the angle of the
coupler extension link was also found to modify the path at the point of planting .
Hence, these parameters can be varied to get a sharp return path.

. A laboratory model of the above mechanism was developed and tested in

laboratory conditions. Further, a four-row rice transplanter incorporating the
above mechanism was also developed and tested. Fig.01 shows sketch of this
transplanter. It was powered by a petrol engine and was a self-propelled model.
These units have worked satisfactorily.

Conclution:
We have analysed the design and working principal a rice planting by using a four-
bar planner mechanism. It will be a 6-row self-propelled rice trans-planter. One
labor will be enough to operate the machine. It will save a lot of time and
expenses.

References:
[1] Anonymous Rice Transplanters, RNAM Digest I. Regional Network for
Agricultural Machinery, C/o United Nations Development Programme, Pasay city,
Philippines, 1979.
[2] A.G. Erdman, G.N. Sandor, in: Mechanism Design Analysis and Synthesis, vol.
1, Prentice Hall of India Pvt. Ltd, New Delhi, India, 1984.
[3] J. Hirschhorn, Kinematics and Dynamics of Plane Mechanisms, McGraw-Hill,
New York, 1962.
[4] R.L. Norton, Design of Machinery, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1992.