This invention relates to an apparatus for disintegrating baled crop materials.
One example of an apparatus of this type is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,340,040 (Bussiere et al.) assigned to the present assignee. The machine disclosed in this patent includes a hopper with sides walls which converge downwardly and inwardly toward a base with a disintegrating roller mounted at the base longitudinally of the hopper and generally parallel to the side walls. Two end walls are provided transverse to the side walls leaving an open top of the hopper into which crop materials can be fed in baled form. Within the hopper longitudinally of the disintegrating roller is provided a pair of support rollers which carry the baled material and rotate it for engagement with the disintegrating roller. An exit slot underneath the hopper is aligned with the disintegrating roller to discharge the material to one side.
This machine has achieved considerable success. The machine as originally designed was intended for cylindrical bales which generally have a diameter and cylindrical or axial length less than six feet so that the hopper was designed with these dimensions in mind.
The loading system for the cylindrical bales as shown in the patent comprises a pair of lift forks at one end of the hopper which engage under the bale with those lift forks being pivoted on lift arms about a pivot axis adjacent the top of the end wall of the hopper. The bale is thus lifted and turned upwardly and over the side wall and dropped into the hopper.
This loading technique is effective for cylindrical bales which are smaller than the hopper so they can simply be lifted and discharged into the hopper.
However the machine has significant difficulty in regard to rectangular bales which are generally less common than the cylindrical bales but are becoming more wide spread. Such rectangular bales are generally significantly larger so that they have a length of approximately eight feet with a height and width of the order of four feet. Such a bale is therefore very large and would not fit within the hopper as designed. It is of course possible to design a machine with a larger hopper but this increases the dimensions of the machine so that it would become less efficient in regard to the smaller cylindrical bales.
The above arrangement as shown in the patent has grid bars that are fixed and welded to the sides of the hopper. However in practice, as shown in a photograph of the machine as sold, each of the grid bars is mounted on the side wall so that one end can be raised and lowered by the addition of a selected number of shims. This adjustment is difficult to achieve since the operator must enter the hopper to effect the adjustment and since each grid bar is individually adjusted.
Another type of machine presently available in the marketplace is that manufactured by Haybuster and disclosed in their U.S. Pat. No. 4,449,672 (Morlock et al.). This type of bale disintegration machine has also achieved considerable commercial success but acts to load the bale in an entirely different manner by rotating the hole of the hopper so that one side wall rests on the ground allowing the bale to be lifted over that side wall as the hopper is tilted back to a more upright position. Again this arrangement is not designed for the large square bale.