Finger rollers for agricultural implements

Details Finger rollers for agricultural implements Finger rollers for agricultural implements

1999-11-12

2001-07-03

Will, Thomas B. (Department: 3671)

Harvesters

Vegetable gatherer

C172S055000

Reexamination Certificate

active

06253535

ABSTRACT:

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The invention relates to a finger roller for agricultural implements, wherein the roller is comprised of two or more finger disks pushed onto a shaft that rotates the roller. The finger disks have a hub which surrounds the shaft and a plurality of slightly elastically deformable fingers arranged about the circumference of the hub and projecting from the hub.
Such rollers are, for example, used for potato harvesters, beet harvesters, rock removers, and vegetable harvesting machines. In principle, they have the object to clean, sort, and screen the tubers or beets or, optionally, to remove soil adhering to the tubers, beets, or the removed rocks.
For manufacturing such a finger roller, individual finger disks are used which are produced by molding and are placed sequentially onto the shaft having a non-circular cross-section. The non-circular cross-section is provided in order to ensure that the finger disks follow the rotation of the shaft. It is often desirable to rotate the fingers of neighboring finger disks relative to one another in the circumferential direction of the drive shaft in order to thereby increase the cleaning effect. In order to achieve this goal, differently shaped finger disks must be used which results, of course, in an increased expenditure for manufacture as well as storage.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to avoid these disadvantages. The invention has the goal to eliminate the aforementioned differently shaped finger disks and to provide instead a finger roller still having the aforementioned finger staggering in the circumferential direction but employing finger disks of identical design.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
As a solution to this object it is suggested that the surface of the shaft is provided with a plurality of circumferential portions of identical design, wherein for an even number of such circumferential portions an uneven number of fingers is provided at the finger disks and wherein for an uneven number of circumferential portions an even number of fingers at the fingers disks is provided.
With such a configuration of the finger disks, it is possible to provide aligned (non-staggered) fingers at neighboring finger disks but also to provide staggered fingers by rotating neighboring finger disks relative to one another when placing them onto the shaft.
This effect can be easily realized with a so-called square shaft having finger disks mounted thereon with three, five, seven, nine, eleven, thirteen, or more fingers (i.e., the number of fingers is uneven).


REFERENCES:
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