GB1427274A - Appatatus for harvesting and cleaning windrowed cane - Google Patents

Abstract

1427274 Sugar cane harvester SUGAR CANE GROWERS COOPERATIVE OF FLORIDA 18 Jan 1974 [9 May 1973] 02490/74 Heading A1F [Also in Division A4] A motor driven sugar cane harvester comprises means for lifting the cane from the ground, cutting it into segments and passing it through an air stream in order to remove trash from the cane. Primary conveyers 54, 56, which operate in parallel and which constitute the forward portion of a lower conveying assembly 22 supported by ground en- -gaging wheels (not shown), lift the severed cone from the ground and convey it through a lower agitator feed roller 74 which consists of a plurality of square plates 75 with clipped corners, these serving to remove leaf particles from the cane. Roller 74 rotates about a hollow shaft 52 to which conveyers 54, 56 are pivoted, and is drivably connected via a chain 84 to the forward roller 30 of a secondary conveyer mounted between side members 34, 36, which serves to transport the cane to upper agitator rollers 78, 106 of similar construction to roller 74. An upper conveyer assembly 24, holds down and guides the cane carried by the lower conveyer assembly 22 during its journey to rollers 78, 106. From rollers 78, 106 the cane passes into a segmentizer made up of cooperating upper arid lower segmentizer rollers 110 and 111 respectively. Each segmentizer roller 'has a plurality of blade members mounted radially about a shaft at 120‹ intervals, the upper blade members 122 having sharpened edges 122' for mating with longitudinal grooves 134 in the edges of the lower blade members 132. From the segmentizer the cane segments are propelled into a cleaning chamber 148 in which a jet of air from a blower (not shown) passes over them separating the lighter waste material which is blown away. The segments then fall on to a transverse conveyer 165 which is enclosed within a chamber 190 and which is made up of two parallel chains 170 connected at spaced intervals by cross members 174 which serve to convey the segments towards the receptacle T, the cane sliding over rib members 186 parallel with the conveyer 165 and through which waste material not already removed may fall. Before finally falling into the receptacle T, any waste material still adhering to the cane segments is shaken loose by the latter encountering a series of agitator rolls 209, the waste material being extracted from the chamber 190 by motor driven fans mounted at the outer end of the transverse conveyer. In an alternative embodiment, the segmentizer rollers have blades 150 (Fig. 6) mounted on their respective shafts at diametrically opposed positions, each roller being divided in two halves with the blades on one half perpendicular to those on the other, the upper and lower rollers both being bisected by radially extending flanges 156 which engage each other and serve to cut any cane likely to be missed by the blades. The longitudinal grooves in the lower roller may be either V shaped in cross section or may have sloping side walls connected at their innermost extent by a flat bottom wall portion; in each instance their dimensions are sufficient to allow material from the cut cane to become embedded in them thereby cushioning the contact between upper and lower blade members. Additionally, the position of the grooved bladed roller and the sharp bladed roller may be reversed.