Sweet potato vines grow lush, and crawl seriously, which are hard to be separated. Manual cutting of vines was characterized by high labor intensity, high cost and low efficiency, which affected the normal harvest operation. For the problems of transport device blockage, large power consumption and difficulty of collecting operating parameters in the harvest process,the sweet potato vines harvesting test bench was designed. The test bench consisted of feeding device, cutting table device and control system, and the feeding velocity, the clipping velocity and the cutting velocity can be adjusted. Sweet potato vines cleaning rate, cutting force, and cutting torque were the main indicators of evaluating the test bench.The tests were grouped the response surface tests and the verifying tests. The testing factors were the feeding velocity (ranging from 0.3m/s to 0.8m/s), the ratio of clipping velocity to feeding velocity (ranging from 1.03 to 1.87) and the cutting velocity (ranging from 0.96m/s to 1.64m/s), and five levels was set for each factor. The response surface testing scheme designed with the central composite design (CCD) method was a three-factor five-level testing scheme. The mathematical model of the response surface was established, and the influence of each factor on the bench operation performance was analyzed and optimized. The result showed that when the feeding velocity was small, the ratio of clipping velocity to feeding velocity was high and there was a moderate cutting velocity. As such, the overall impact trend of the vines cleaning rate was high. When the cutting velocity was high, the cutting force and the cutting torque was small. The feeding velocity and the ratio of clipping velocity to feeding velocity had no significant impact on the cutting force and the cutting torque. The experiment results also showed that the order of the factors affecting of the vines cleaning rate was ratio of clipping velocity, feeding velocity, and cutting velocity. The order of the main factors affecting of the cutting force and the cutting torque was cutting velocity, ratio of clipping velocity, and feeding velocity. It was concluded that the optimal combination of the working parameters of the bench was as follows: 0.55m/s for the feeding velocity, 1.48 for the ratio of clipping velocity to feeding velocity,1.50m/s for the cutting velocity, 91.0% for the cleaning rate,152.89N for the cutting force, 5.87N·m for the cutting torque. By comparing the mathematical model and the experimental result, the error was less than 5%, which meant that the model established was reliable and could be used for optimization.