Straw chopper using drum with knives

摘要

The invention concerns a chopping device located behind the cutter which cuts off the ears of corn in a combine harvester, the chopper elements of the chopping device chopping the stalks falling from the shakers into short lengths. The aim of the invention is, using a special chopper-element design, to reduce the power required, to ensure that stalks falling onto the chopper in both transverse and longitudinal orientations are cut and broken up uniformly into the shortest possible lengths and subsequently to discharge the chopped stalks on the ground as uniformly as possible oveer the whole swathe width. This is achieved by virtue of the fact that the chopper drum has stalk-carrying plates (6) with toothed leading edges fixed over the whole of its curved surface, the plates drawing transversely oriented stalks in a relatively thin, uniform layer past chopper blades (8) fixed to the chopping-chamber wall but spring-mounted to allow them a degree of play. Longitudinally oriented stalks picked up by the plates are separated out by another device following the chopper. This device can consist of a simple catcher (26) located immediately after the chopper blades. To deal with stalks which are more difficult to separate, an additional drum-type chopper (45) or several disc-type choppers (49) can, optionally, be fitted after the transverse-stalk chopping device.