LOADER WORKING BODY FOR THE SOFT-SIDED STORAGE CONTAINERS LOADING

Natural and climatic conditions of Ukraine are very favorable for growing berries and fruits. The development of the fruit and vegetable industry in Ukraine requires the mechanization of many production processes in order to increase the quality of products, reduce their cost by reducing manual labor. That's why technologies for harvesting berries and fruits need to be improved. Also, a new equipment, which would reduce yield losses of berries and fruits, must be developed. One of the most important problems of picking berries and fruits is the use of manual labor, which leads to an increase in the cost of finished products. It should be noted that in the technological process of picking berries and fruits, the most time-consuming operations are the operations of the loading and unloading cycle. Taking into account the above, improving the technology of picking berries and fruits due to the mechanization of work, in particular, loading and unloading, is a very urgent task. Solving this problem is possible due to the development of a new gripping mechanism of loader. During the analysis of fruit harvesting technology, it was found that loading and transport operations have a significant impact on the quality of fruit and vegetable products. Therefore, during the design development of loader working body, it is necessary to take into account a certain feature, namely, that the interaction of the loader working bodies occurs with easily deformable containers. This requires the use of special working bodies. For soft-sided storage containers with berries, the grabber design, which can be installed on a forklift and used for loading and unloading operations, is proposed in the article. For determining the holding force of soft containers, the equation was obtained. It was established that the magnitude of this force depends on the design parameters of the gripper. The proposed scheme of a variable working body is recommended for implementation at agricultural enterprises specializing in the cultivation of berries and fruits.