Design of Sweet Potato Vine Chopping and Returning Machine

Abstract

Based on sweet potato vine creeping stems features and northern cropping patterns, this paper developed a sweet potato vine chopping and returning machine. It consists of pick-up mechanism, cut-off device, crushing device, ground wheel assembly and main frame etc.. The machine is attached directly to the tractor´s three-point linkage. It can complete vine picking up, cut-off, crushing and returning in one operation. The gear box which is made for turning and increasing speed is driven by PTO, and then drives cut-off system and crushing device individually. With the tractor forward, the vines was first picked up by the pick-up mechanism and cut off by the rotating disc of the cut-off device, and crushed by the crushing shaft with the help of the negative pressure caused by the high speed rotation of the crushing blade shaft.