Abstract
This study was performed to offer the data for design of the seedling bed transfer equipment to make the automation of working process in a plant factory. The seedling bed transfer equipment pushing the seedling bed with bearing wheels on the rail for interconnecting each working process by a pneumatic cylinder was made and examined. The examined transfer force to push the seedling bed with a weight of 178.9 N by the pneumatic cylinder with length of 60 cm and section area of 5 $cm^2$ was measured by experiments. The examined transfer forces was compared with theoretical ones calculated by the theoretical formula derived from dynamic system analysis according to the number of the seedling bed and pushing speed of the pneumatic cylinder head at no load. The transfer function of the equipment with the input variable as the pushing speed $V_{h0}$(m/s) and the output variable as the transfer force f(t)(N) was represented as $F(s)=(V_{h0}/k)(s+B/M)/(s(s^2+Bs/M+1/(kM))$ where M(kg), k(m/N) and B(Ns/m) are the mass of the bed, the compression coefficient of the pneumatic cylinder and the dynamic friction coefficient between the seedling bed and the rail, respectively. The examined transfer force curves and the theoretical ones were represented similar wave forms as to use the theoretical formular to design the device for the seedling bed transfer. The condition of no vibration of the transfer force curve was $kB^2>4M$. The condition of transferring the bed by the repeatable impact and vibration force according to difference of transfer distance of the pneumatic cylinder head from that of the bed was as $Ce^{-\frac{3{\pi}D}{2\omega}}<-1$, where ${\omega}=\sqrt{\frac{1}{kM}-\frac{B^2}{4M^2}}$, $C=\{\frac{\frac{B}{2M}-\frac{1}{kB}}{\omega}\}$, $D=\frac{B}{2M}$. The examined mean peak transfer force represented 4 times of the stead state transfer force. Therefore it seemed that the transfer force of the pneumatic cylinder required for design of the push device was 4Bv where v is the pushing speed.
