• Journal of agriculture & life science
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• v.45 no.5
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• pp.105-113
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• 2011

This study was carried out to develop an automatic loading equipment that can load seedling trays on loading position of the seedling bed driving on enclosed-type rail installed for interconnecting each process of raising seedlings in plant factory. The experiment of transferring the seedling tray by monorail pusher was carried out to figure out the required transfer force and problems during push type device of transporting the plastic seedling trays, that has completed its sowing process, which are installed onto the board of different materials. From the results of this experiment, the loading equipment which can exactly load three of the seedling trays orderly on the loading position of the seedling bed was designed and made. When three sowed trays on every board are transferred by pusher with the speed is at 30 cm/s, the maximum peak transfer force with maximum overshooting at initial transient state and the maximum transfer force at stead state are were respectively 32.8 N, 29.4 N on rubber board, 29.7 N, 22.5 N on a wooden board, 26.9 N, 19.6 N on a acrylic board, and 27.6 N, 19.1 N on an iron board. Changes in the transfer force occurred its maximum at the moment when the pusher collided with the tray, after the collision gradually decreased until it became stable. When two or three trays placed it in order of widthwise are transferred, it is occurred the overlapping of the tray's external bracket. The developed automatic loading equipment with PLC controller did not make any operation error through 100 times of tests, its maximum seedling tray loading speed was 2 sec/tray and its maximum error of transferred location of the tray was 0.5 cm.