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AssigneesThe Morning Star Company, Faulring Mechanical Devices, Inc
InventorsFrank W. Faulring, Robert Chope Gill, II, Peter M. Lomanto, Robert D. Force, Jason W. Faulring
Estimating the term…
Transplanter which can avoid skips when planting, which skips may occur when seeds in a tray row fail to grow into seedlings. This is accomplished by picking up an entire row of seedlings from a tray, transferring the seedlings to a mechanism which eliminates gaps between seedlings, and then discharging the seedlings one at time to the ground with a desired spacing between the seedlings. A novel tray indexing mechanism is provided which can index trays of varying sizes. The planting mechanism has an air knife mounted adjacent transfer disks for straightening out the foliage as stems of seedlings before they are received by the planting disks, and the planting and transfer disks may be moved towards and away from each other for seedlings of differing heights.
A transplanting method for transplanting seedlings grown in trays having a plurality of side-by side rows of seedling cells, which method plants the seedlings uniformly apart even though not all cells have seedlings, the method being characterized by the following steps:
An apparatus for transplanting seedlings grown in trays having a plurality of side-by side rows of seedling cells, which apparatus plants the seedlings uniformly apart even though not all cells have seedlings, the apparatus being characterized by the following:
A transplanter which discharges seedlings one at time to the ground with a desired spacing between the seedlings, the transplanter having an improved plant assembly comprising:
A transplanter which discharges seedlings one at time to the ground with a desired spacing between the seedlings, the transplanter having an improved plant feeder subassembly comprising:
A nursery tray indexing mechanism for use in a transplanter which discharges seedlings one at time to the ground with a desired spacing between the seedlings, which transplanter picks up an entire row of seedlings from a tray, which indexing mechanism is capable of receiving nursery trays of differing depths, widths, lengths and spacings between adjacent rows of cells, the indexing mechanism comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.