The present invention relates to cotton harvesters and, in particular, to a scrapping plate assembly for a cotton harvester row unit.
Cotton harvesting has always been economically sensitive. When productivity increases were necessary to meet demand, manual picking was replaced by machinery. Though requiring less labor content, the machinery was capital intensive and less efficient in harvesting the available crop, failing to pick immature cotton bolls and dropping to the ground otherwise utile product. Gains were made in production speed and harvest efficiency as multi-row harvesters became available. Notwithstanding these improvements, to remain competitive in cost and supply, dual pass harvesting was employed to reap the cotton missed in the first harvest.
As the cotton sector evolves, smaller tracts of land are being supplanted by large fields, typically 1,000 acres or more. When all the costs and times associated with the larger fields have been considered, it is generally deemed uneconomical to conduct multiple pass harvesting, and the dropage and incomplete harvesting considered inescapable yield losses. Experience has shown that as much as 10% to 15% of the cotton lint remains on the stalks or on the ground after a single harvesting path.
Accessories such as scrapping plates have been employed for increasing efficiencies, but have not been considered acceptable for initial harvesting particularly for heavy cotton or use with short knotty cotton. These scrapping plates carried on the pressure plates are used in conjunction with spindle-type pickers, such as the John Deere 9965 series and as disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,203,152 to Deutsch et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,519,988 to Copley; U.S. Pat. No. 5,557,910 to Del Rosario; U.S. Pat. No. 6,293,078 to Deutsch el al.; and U.S. Pat. No. Re. 32,699 to Fachini. Therein, vertical rows of rotating spindles carried on an orbiting drum engage the cotton bolls with pointed barbs, carry the entangled cotton between grid bars to doffer columns whereat the cotton is removed from the spindles and discharged to a vacuum conveyor system for delivery to the storage container. The scrapping plates have projecting triangular ribs that coact with alternate spindles to compressively force the cotton through the passage therebetween, engaging and capturing bolls that would otherwise not be harvested. The contact path is relatively short, about 3 inches, and shallow, about 1 inch, such that only about two barbs contact the compressed boll thereby limiting engagement with the result that cotton bolls may drop to the ground or be dislodged by the grid bars.
In view of the foregoing, it would be desirable to provide a cotton harvester adjunct for use in single pass cotton harvesting to provide increased yields through reduction in dropage and an increase in stalk picking.
The foregoing is accomplished in the present invention by a scrapping plate assembly that employs elongated tapered ribs adjacent each passing spindle to increase the contact path while the cotton in a compacted condition thereby increasing barb engagement and contact time with the spindle, increasing harvesting from the stalks and reducing dropage. The scrapping plate assembly includes a base plate, fixed at existing mounting holes on the rear of the row unit pressure plate, and carrying a plurality of elongated ribs providing independent parallel paths for each spindle. The ribs have a tapered entry section for progressively engaging the product, a center section for engaging multiple barbs with the product over a substantial distance and height, and a tapered exit section extending beyond the pressure plate and gradually reducing contact with the product adjacent the grid bars. The scrapping plate assembly markedly increases the cotton removed from the stalks in a single pass and decreases the product lost through dropage.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide an accessory for increasing the cotton harvesting on a row unit cotton harvester.
Another object of the invention is to provide an improved scrapping plate yielding an improved cotton removal and retrieval in a single harvesting operation.
A further object of the invention is to provide a scrapping assembly for a cotton harvester row unit that increases the capture of cotton by the picker spindles.