Engineering in Agriculture, Environment and Food
Online ISSN : 1881-8366
ISSN-L : 1881-8366
Development of prototype harvester for head lettuce
Van Nguyen Nang Suguru Yamane
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JOURNAL FREE ACCESS

2015 Volume 8 Issue 1 Pages 18-25

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Abstract

Method of manual removal of produce from the field has been a bottle-neck for lettuce production in Japan. In order to reduce the production cost of this fresh commodity, a prototype harvester has been developed for head lettuce production. The harvester consists of a cutting component to slice the lettuce head at the desired location and a lifting component that transports the harvested produce from the cutting site onto elevating conveyor and trimming station. A cutting component with reciprocating blade was proposed. Laboratory tests were performed to verify ability of reciprocating blade to slice lettuce stump at forward cutting speed of 0.1 m/s, reciprocating stroke of 18 mm, and different reciprocating frequencies of 2, 4 and 6 Hz. In addition, power requirement for reciprocating the cutting knife as slicing two lettuce stumps was measure. Tests in lettuce fields were also conducted at different working speed to investigation the cutting and lifting performances of the harvester mounted with the reciprocating-blade cutting component. The results of laboratory tests indicated that the cutting component could smoothly cut lettuce stumps and the maximum cutting torque and cutting power requirement were 0.73 Nm and 27.7 W, respectively at 6 Hz reciprocating frequency. Field test results showed that the harvester could cut and lift the lettuce heads without damaging and blemishing the produce at working speed of 0.04 m/s and the commercial head percentage was 94.5%. At higher working speed of 0.08 m/s, the head damage rate was 12.8% reducing the percent of commercially accepted heads to 87.2%.

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© 2015 Asian Agricultural and Biological Engineering Association
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