The relative position of the flax plant strip and stripping apparatus during separate cleaning
Nowadays, with an acute shortage of high-quality raw materials for the textile industry and a significant increase in energy prices, the introduction of separate flax harvesting technology in production is becoming especially urgent. However, the use of such technology is constrained by its high dependence on weather conditions and the lack of reliable and inexpensive equipment. The greatest difficulty for mechanization is the second phase of separate cleaning, which is most dependent on weather conditions. The level of weather dependence entirely depends on the design features of the pick-up stripping apparatus, which main working body is the apparatus for separating the seed of the crop from the stems. It was established in the work that the quality of this apparatus depends on the width of the zone of arrangement of the boxes in the plant ribbon and on its ordinate relative to the clamping conveyor of the stripping apparatus. During the pickers operation, the indicated ordinate changes to a wider extent due to systematic errors in copying the flax tape in the horizontal plane by the selecting working body. In order to maximize the collection of products during separate flax harvesting, scientists of the Kostroma State Agricultural Academy investigated the process of separating the seed part of the crop from the stems with a stripping apparatus, taking into account the influence of the mentioned factors. The results of experimental studies have shown that the stated requirement is fulfilled with a minimum size of the box location zone (≤ 30 cm) and its distance from the front edge of the clamping conveyor by 53 cm. In this case, all seed boxes fall into the area of action of the ridges of the stripping apparatus, and the loss of stems does not exceed 3 %. It is possible to stabilize the optimal position of the plant ribbon using an orienting device and a system for automatically moving the stripping apparatus. The minimum size of the zone of location of seed boxes can be ensured only with high quality performance of all previous technological operations for the cultivation of flax.