Harvesters – Cutting – Cutter members
Patent
1997-02-18
1998-09-22
Shackelford, Heather
Harvesters
Cutting
Cutter members
56307, 56364, 56220, A01D 3414, A01D 3440
Patent
active
058097597
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to crop harvesters and more particularly to a crop harvester for cutting and gathering a crop as the harvester moves in a direction of travel across a field, the harvester including a cutter bar having a knife bar for cutting the crop and gathering means for collecting the cut crop.
The invention is concerned with improvements in such harvesters for reducting losses in gathering crops, for example dry beans, that are subject to significant losses in harvesting.
BACKGROUND
One source of crop losses is dehiscence that occurs in cutting. Generally, when the oscillating knife of a conventional cutter bar cuts the stem of a plant, the forces applied to the plant produce a high acceleration and rapid displacement that can cause the fruit of the plant to dehisce. Much of this dehisced fruit is directed into the following harvester header by a rotating pickup reel positioned above the cutter bar. However, some of the fruit can fall straight down to the sickle and be lost, or it can fall onto the front edge of the harvester header where the vibration and movement of the harvester can cause it to move forwards and fall off the cutter bar.
Another source of crop loss is an inability to pick up the crop for cutting and delivery to the harvester. For crops that grow close to ground level, it is often necessary to provide a mechanical system for lifting the fruit above the cutter bar. The prior art mechanism for doing this is a series of crop lifters that are attached to the cutter bar guards and which extend down to ground level in front of the cutter bar to lift the crop from ground level and provide a transition for the crop between ground level and the harvester, header. These crop lifters work well in vine-type crops or lodged cereals, but do not work well in crops in which the plants have single central stems with the fruit grouped closely around the stems (e.g. dry bean crops). These plants can pass between the fingers of the crop lifters, rendering the crop lifters ineffective.
In addition, the prior art reel mechanisms, in the form of bat reels, pickup reels and air reels, do not work particularly well for sweeping dehisced fruit into the header of the harvester. The bat reel and the pickup reel have no provision for operation in close proximity to a floating cutter bar. When a floating cutter bar moves into the path of a reel, damage to the bats, the pickup reel teeth and the cutter bar can occur. With an air reel, the forces produced are insufficient to provide a positive feed of crop material from the cutter bar to the header.
The present invention relates to certain improvements in crop harvesting machinery that reduces losses from these causes.
SUMMARY
According to one aspect of the present invention there is provided a crop harvester for cutting and gathering a crop as the harvester moves in a direction of travel across a field, the harvester including a cutter bar having a knife bar for cutting the crop and gathering means for collecting the cut crop, and characterized by:
a plurality of bristle guards mounted side by side on the cutter bar, each bristle guard comprising a set of bristles extending transversely of the direction of travel, and the bristles of adjacent bristle guards having confronting free ends so as to allow the passage of plant stems therebetween.
The bristles capture fruit loss due to dehiscence in cutting and hold the fruit to be swept into the header by a reel. The bristles also provide a lifting action for the full width of the cutter bar. The central stem of the plant may pass between adjacent sets of the bristles, while the bristles lift the fruit above the cutter bar.
The "bristles" are resilient elements that may be similar to the bristles of a brush. They may also be thicker than conventional brush bristles, more like rods or bars, and spaced further apart than the bristles of a conventional brush. They must be sufficiently yielding to allow the plant stems to pass through to the cutter, but stiff enough to hold the de
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Kushwaha Lal R.
Reed William B.
Zyla Lloyd E.
Battison Adrian D.
Shackelford Heather
The University of Saskatchewan
Thrift Murray E.
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