Harvesters – Motorized harvester – Including plural operating units and drive
Patent
1993-07-27
1995-01-03
Bagnell, David J.
Harvesters
Motorized harvester
Including plural operating units and drive
56131, 100 3, 100 6, 100 7, A01D 3700, A01G 23081, B65B 2710
Patent
active
053774795
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
The present invention generally relates to harvesting machines and more specifically relates to a method as well as an apparatus for harvesting and bundling plants, preferably energy forest plants and the like planted in rows, whereby plants from one or several planting rows, in a harvesting assembly, during advancement of the assembly on the ground, are continuously gripped by a feeding means and cut off and after the cutting are fed by the feeding means for continued treatment or storage.
Thus, the invention is primarily directed to the field of energy forest, but it should be emphasized that the invention is not restricted to this technical field and that the expression "plants" as employed herein, includes vegetation of different kinds, ranging from crops having thin stems and up to smaller trees.
For cultivations it is generally of great importance for the economy of the business to provide for rational harvesting which as far as possible lowers the costs for this phase. This is a major problem especially when cultivating energy forests, since the harvesting costs represent a large portion, presently up to 45%, of the costs per MWh. It is therefore of utmost importance to lower the harvesting costs, which make up such a large portion of the total costs, in order to compete with other energy sources.
Several attempts have been made with the purpose of rendering the harvesting work more effective, whereby for instance SE, A, 429 085 discloses a machine for harvesting and bundling plants and of the general kind indicated in the introduction, whereby the machine is provided with left and right collecting pockets for receiving plants from the respective planting row and gripping means for serving the respective collecting pocket. Although this prior art machine has been provided with an intermediate storage for each collecting pocket in order to allow for continuous cutting and collecting of plants in the machine, independent of the displacement of bundled plants from the collecting pockets to a binding apparatus by the gripping means, this results in a bulky and complex machine provided with a great number of moving parts forming potential sources of interrupted operation. For the same reason a machine of this structure becomes relatively expensive, which in turn increases the harvesting costs. Another disadvantage resides in the fact that the bundles or faggots of plants formed by means of the prior art machine are relatively irregular and therefore less suited for handling and storage. Due to the complicated and thereby expensive structure of this prior art machine and partly due to the less convenient handling and storage of the bundles, it has not been possible to obtain any actual lowering of the harvesting costs in excess of what has been indicated above, when employing this prior art machine.
Within this technical field there are also examples of other harvesting machines which to some extent correspond to what has been stated in the introduction, but which do not employ any bundling technique. One of said machines is a self-propelled machine which brings the collected and cut off plants directly to a chopping apparatus provided on the machine. A determining disadvantage of this machine is its extremely high cost price, due to the self-propelled design and due to the inclusion of the chopping apparatus, which means that this machine in most cases is not any reasonable alternative for economical reasons. Moreover, it is an essential disadvantage that the plants are directly chipped into chippings, since such chippings cannot be stored for any considerable time without being subjected to the danger of burning together and so forth.
Another prior art machine is provided with a storage space for the cut-off and collected plants, which are collected in said space in a loose condition and which are simply discharged or dumped from the machine when the space is full. Although this machine may be manufactured at a comparatively low cost it causes further problems and costs in connection with handling the l
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patent: 4562693 (1986-01-01), Felix
patent: 4633776 (1987-01-01), Blackmore et al.
patent: 4860808 (1989-08-01), Le Clerc De Bussy
Wilstrand Mats
Wilstrand Ragnar
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