Abstract:Aiming to address issues such as low efficiency, high costs, and the lack of grafting equipment meeting domestic production requirements in the market, a fully automatic seedling?off?tray grafting machine was designed. It can automatically complete operations, including seedling loading, scion pre?cutting, seedling clamping, simultaneous multi?seedling cutting, scion alignment and clamping, and seedling replanting. The structure and working principle of the grafting machine were detailed, with key mechanisms and operational parameters designed for seedling loading, transportation, pre?cutting, clamping, cutting, and clamp application. To determine optimal parameters and enhance grafting success rates, tomato, peppers, and eggplants as test subjects. The factors selected for investigation were the height of the rootstock after pre?cutting, the descent height of the scion during alignment, the height of the scion, and the descent speed of the scion during alignment. Grafting success rate served as the evaluation metric. A four?factor, three?level response surface experiment was conducted, revealing that the descent height and descent speed of the scion during alignment were significant factors affecting grafting success rate. Design?Expert 13 software was employed for variance analysis, response surface analysis, parameter optimization, and experimental validation to obtain the optimal parameter combination. Experimental results indicated that when the pre?cut rootstock height was 70~80 mm, scion descent height was 75 mm, scion height was 140~160 mm, and scion descent speed was 0.2 m/s, the average grafting success rate reached 94.6% with an average grafting efficiency of 1 110 plants per hour, meeting the demands for large?scale grafting operations of solanaceous vegetable seedlings.