Design and Experiments of a Roll-Knife Pickup for a Buckwheat Pickup Harvester

To reduce grain loss during pickup and prevent stalk entanglement in buckwheat harvesters, thereby improving the quality of mechanized harvesting, a three-stage pickup conveyor roll with a ground-level rotary knife-type pickup header was designed and tested. This paper, based on the growth characteristics of buckwheat, determined the three-stage pickup conveying process and the overall structure of the ground-level rotary knife-type pickup header. Kinematic analysis and parameter design of the rotary knife-type pickup roll were conducted. Finally, a physical prototype was fabricated, and field performance tests were carried out, using machine forward speed and pickup roll rotational speed as influencing factors and pickup loss rate as an evaluation metric. Results showed that the interaction between pickup roll rotational speed and forward speed had a significant effect on the pickup loss rate, with forward speed having a greater impact than pickup roll rotational speed. Under consideration of their interaction, when the pickup roll rotational speed was within the range of 396–457 r/min, and the forward speed was between 0.9–1.0 m/s, the pickup loss rate was minimized. Based on the regression equation model, the predicted optimal conditions were a forward speed of 1.0 m/s and a roll pickup speed of 396 rpm. Under these conditions, the test results showed a pickup loss rate of 5.235%, indicating good pickup performance. This research provides a reference for the design of pickup devices in grain combine harvesters.