Development history and trend of rotary tiller

Published on: July 23, 2021 Source: Science and Technology, Volume 29, 2021, March 8 Author: Wei Hongda

Wei Hongda

Zhaodong Anmin Township People's Government Suihua City, Heilongjiang Province 151113

Abstract: Rotary tiller is a kind of tillage machine with active rotation of working parts and processing of soil based on the milling principle. It has the characteristics of good soil cutting effect, strong soil breaking ability, and flat farming surface. It also has the functions of tilling and soil breaking, and can achieve ground breaking in one operation. Rotary tillers can significantly shorten the time of plowing and land preparation, help to seize time, improve productivity, and save labor costs. Especially in recent years, with the continuous development of agricultural science and technology, the continuous adjustment of planting structure in various regions, and the vigorous promotion of national no-tillage and less tillage technology, the application and development of rotary tillage machinery have been further promoted.

Key words: rotary tiller; characteristic; Type; Development process; Development trend

Rotary cultivator is a driving soil tillage machine with rotary blade as its working part, also known as rotary cultivator, and is the main equipment for mechanized tillage and land preparation in China at present. In recent years, it has been more and more favored by farmers because of its strong ability to break soil and smooth the surface after ploughing. In addition, as an important agricultural production machinery, rotary tiller plays an important role in improving the efficiency of tillage and land preparation. This paper discusses the development process and trend of rotary tiller in detail.

1、 Features of rotary tiller

1. Strong soil crushing performance, and the ground is flat after operation. When working in dry land, the tractor power output shaft drives the rotary tiller to rotate and cut the soil. The cut soil blocks collide with each other and break. After the soil is broken, the cover shall be even and flat, and there will be no furrow on the ground.

2. The length of the longitudinal structure and the distance of penetration are short, and the land head is correspondingly reduced, so the productivity is high.

3. It can give full play to tractor power. When working in farmland, the drive wheel of the tractor may slip, resulting in reduced traction. When the rotary tiller blade shaft rotates, the cutting direction of the blade is opposite to the forward direction of the tractor, so the cutting reaction force of the soil on the blade is the same as the forward direction of the tractor. So when the tractor and the rotary tiller work together, the rotation of the rotary tiller will generate a force to push the tractor forward, so as to give full play to the tractor power.

2、 Type of rotary tiller

1. Horizontal rotary tiller. It has strong soil breaking capacity, and can meet the requirements of soil breaking and leveling in one operation, and meet the basic requirements of dry land planting or paddy field planting. However, due to the limitation of the rotation radius of the rotary tiller roll, the horizontal rotary tiller has a poor ability to cover the stubble and weeds. The tillage depth is generally 12~16cm, and the power consumption is large. When the horizontal rotary tiller is working, the rotary tiller blade is driven by the tractor's power output shaft to rotate, and on the other hand, it moves in a straight line with the unit's forward direction. In the process of soil cutting, the blade first cuts the soil, and then throws it backward. The soil is crushed when it hits the cover and the carriage, and then falls back to the surface. As the unit continues to move forward, the blade will continue to break the uncultivated land.

The driving mode of horizontal rotary tiller is generally driven by the tractor power output shaft through the transmission device. According to the transmission route, it can be divided into the central drive of the reducer and the drive of the main - side reducer. The central drive is used for the rotary tiller with positive configuration. The power is transmitted from the center to the cutter shaft. It has the characteristics of balanced force on the whole machine and good frame rigidity. However, there is leakage of tillage at the lower part of the gearbox, and special blade or cutter shaft shall be designed to prevent leakage of tillage. The main - side drive is used for the side configuration of the rotary tiller. The power is transmitted from the main transformer box to the side reducer after the bevel gear is reversed. This drive mode has no leakage of tillage, but the tillage width is too large, and the rigidity of the whole machine is poor.

The horizontal rotary tiller can be divided into positive and reverse according to the rotation direction of the knife roll. Among them, the forward rotary tiller operates in a forward milling mode. The rotary tiller cuts the soil downward and backward from the uncultivated surface and throws the soil. The reaction force of the cutter roll cutting the soil is consistent with the tractor's forward direction, which is conducive to the unit passing through the soft and wet soil. The reverse rotary tiller operates in the reverse milling mode. The rotary tiller enters the soil from the cultivated ground, and cuts the soil from the bottom of the tilth to the top. The research shows that the cutting resistance encountered in the up-milling is small, and the power consumption is small when the plowing depth is greater than the radius of the cutter roll.

2. Vertical rotary tiller. The utility model is a rotary tiller with cutter teeth or blades rotating around a vertical shaft, and its working part is a "gate" rotor composed of several vertical rotary tillers. Multiple rotors are horizontally arranged in a row, and the two adjacent rotors are directly meshed and driven by two gears. Therefore, the rotation direction of each rotor is opposite to the left and right adjacent rotors. When installing rotors, the "door" planes of adjacent rotors are perpendicular to each other and do not interfere with each other. The range of activities of adjacent rotary tillers is overlapped to prevent missed tillage. Since the circumferential speed of the blade is generally more than twice the forward speed of the machine, the path of the blade on the ground is a long-spoke cycloid, so the blade has good soil crushing effect.

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The power of the vertical rotary tiller is output by the power output shaft, which drives a pair of bevel gears and a row of horizontal spur gears in the box-type frame to drive a door-shaped rotor. The adjacent rotors are perpendicular to each other in configuration, and any rotor is staggered and overlapped in the operation area, eliminating the disadvantage of poor rigidity of the horizontal middle drive and the horizontal side drive. The rotation direction of the adjacent rotors is opposite, which can offset the working side force of the rotor, Make the unit run smoothly.

The vertical rotary tiller is suitable for paddy field hydroponics, and has strong functions of soil breaking and pulping, but its coverage performance is poor. In order to improve the tillage effect, various additional devices can be installed on the rotary tiller, such as a nail tooth rake attached to the back of the rotary tiller to enhance the effect of soil crushing; Add scarifier and deep plough.

In order to meet the requirements of new agronomy, rotary tillers are developing in the direction of rotary tillage, stubble removal, deep loosening, ridging and other complex operations. Rotary tillage compound operation can improve production efficiency, reduce operation costs and reduce the number of units entering the land.

3. Inclined rotary tiller. The rotary tiller working parts of the inclined rotary tiller are inclined in the horizontal plane. The rotary tiller blade rotation plane is at a certain angle with the forward direction of the machine - inclined angle. The rotary tiller blade moves relative along the axis when cutting soil. The arrangement of single-row rotary blades on the cutter shaft is related to the unit forward speed, the cutter roll rotation speed and the blade width. There is a certain phase difference between two adjacent rotary blades on the same helix. Inclined rotary tiller does not plough again when working, which relieves soil constraints, reduces power consumption and tillage resistance.

3、 Development history of rotary tiller

Because the traditional plow needs to repeatedly cultivate the land, which is easy to damage the soil and is not conducive to soil and water conservation, the rotary tiller came into being. In the middle of the 19th century, a kind of machinery powered by 3~4kW internal combustion engine appeared in Britain, the United States and other countries, mainly used for gardening. Since then, the successful development of L-type rotary tiller has enabled the rotary tiller to start field work.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Japan imported dryland rotary tillers from Europe. Through a large number of experiments and research work, it successfully developed a kind of machete suitable for local paddy cultivation requirements, which solved the problem of grass entanglement between the cutter teeth and the cutter shaft. Since then, new rotary tillers have been popularized in Japan.

Rotary tillers have gone through three stages in China: single machine development, series product development and new product upgrading. At the end of the 1950s, China began to develop rotary tillers for walking tractors. At the beginning of the 1970s, a series of rotary tillers matching domestic tractors were designed and widely popularized in dry fields in the northern plains.

With the development of modern planting industry and farming agronomy, multifunctional combined multiple operation machines have appeared frequently. The new series of rotary tillers adopt new rotary tillers with reasonable speed parameters and width, which can meet different farming purposes and agronomic requirements. The self-propelled drive rotary tiller can work in different conditions and different types of soil. It has its own power transmission system, without traction power, which can reduce power consumption and save energy and environmental protection.

4、 Development trend of rotary tiller

1. It will develop in a large and broad direction. Due to the limitation of strength and structural size, the functions of rotary tiller series products are relatively simple, and most of them are matched with small and medium-sized tractors. In the future, the research and promotion of rotary tillers should focus on large-scale and deep cultivation. Paddy soil has high moisture content, low shear strength and compressive strength, and close to zero adhesion and external friction. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a high-efficiency rotary tiller with a width greater than 3m to meet the needs of intensive rice production.

2. Develop in the direction of joint operation. Driven by the rotary tiller, by adding or replacing working parts, the comprehensive operations such as stubble removal, deep loosening, soil breaking, border making, ridging, trenching, seeding, deep application of chemical fertilizer, film spreading, pressing and spraying can be completed to improve production efficiency. Therefore, the rotary tillage compound combine will become a research hotspot in the future.

3. Full width and deep rotation. When planting potato and rhizome crops, the cultivated land should be deeply cultivated to thicken the soil ripening layer and improve the permeability of the deep soil. Therefore, the rotary tiller with a depth of more than 20 cm is also the focus of future research. At present, some countries have developed interval narrow breadth deep plough and full breadth deep plough, which make the depth of plough reach 90~120cm and 30~60cm.

4. It has developed into a multi-purpose machine. China's existing greenhouse agricultural farming machinery products are not many, and the application is not widespread. Most of them use the existing small-scale farming machinery in the open field, which has poor adaptability, low production efficiency, and unstable operation quality. With the increase of greenhouse technology and area, the demand for small rotary tillers suitable for greenhouse operation will also increase. In order to reduce power consumption and improve work efficiency, a multi-purpose small rotary tiller should be developed, that is, one machine can realize rotary tillage and land preparation, furrowing and ridge supporting, sowing, intertillage and weeding, harvesting, water pump distribution (spraying, spray), short distance transportation and other operations. Especially in the process of rotary tilling, it is necessary to be able to tile the corners of the shed.

5. Develop in the direction of environmental protection. With the development of modern science and technology, some new technologies will be widely used in rotary tillers, such as signal systems. In recent years, reducing pollution has become the focus of agricultural mechanization design, and the reverse stubble rotary tiller that can complete the straw returning operation will become a research hotspot.

reference:

[1] Ge Yiyuan. Discussion on the type and research direction of rotary tiller [J]. Use and maintenance of agricultural machinery, 2016 (01)

[2] Hua Xiukun. Development history and trend outlook of rotary tiller [J]. Agricultural Science and Technology and Equipment, 2016 (08)