Abstract:
Natural rubber is an essential strategic material of the country. With the low rubber prices in recent years, many rubber workers have lost their jobs, and large areas of rubber gardens have been abandoned and cut down. This research is based on the PLC control method to solve the situation mentioned above. It develops a fully automatic needle-punched rubber picking equipment that can be moved by a soft track erected on a tree. This paper designs the structure of the main moving parts of the rubber picker, sets up a control platform for automatic rubber picking, including PLC programming, man-machine interface design, analyzes the tensioning principle of the soft steel wire track of the walking device, and the principle of needle penetration, and provides theoretical support for the movement and operation design of the rubber picking machine. Finally, a comparative test was conducted on the traditional rubber tapping methods. The test results show that the time consumption of each needle punch of the rubber picker is almost the same as that of the traditional rubber tapping knife, which is both 10 s/plant. In the later stage, it can be combined with the stimulation of ethephon, and the number of pinholes for rubber picking can be increased to increase the output of the amount of glue. In terms of operation mode, the research and development of the rubber picking equipment and breakthroughs in key technologies also provide the possibility and lay the foundation for the realization of fully automatic rubber picking operations.