CORN HARVESTER MACHINE WITH MECHANISM FOR PICKING UP DOWNED CORNSTALKS AND RETRIEVING EARS THEREFROM

摘要

CORN HARVESTER MACHINE WITH MECHANISM FOR PICKINGUP DOWNED CORNSTALKS AND RETRIEVING EARS THEREFROMAbstractA corn harvester machine with an improved cornhead for picking up downed cornstalks. The head has someconventional components including a cross auger conveyorwith a forwardly open trough and a base portion extendingforwardly and downwardly from it, pairs of horizontallyspaced stripper plates with gathering chains and snappingrolls running above and below them and defining a pluralitystalk-receiving throats. A lower cowl is fixedly mountedbetween each adjacent pair of stripper plates and adownwardly concave upper cowl is nested over each lower cowland pivotally journaled to it for up and down tiltingmovement about a horizontal tilting axis at the cowl rearend portions. A pair of stalk lifting chains are trainedfor orbital movement between pairs of driving and idlersprockets. The driving sprockets are journaled in the lowercowl about the tilting axis. The idler sprockets arerotatably journaled in a front nose portion of the uppercowl and are vertically movable with it. The lifting chainshave exposed paddles trained to move forwardly at groundlevel beneath the cowls, upwardly around the front noseportion, and have carrying runs which move backwardly alongthe top of the upper cowl for its full length, overlappingthe carrying runs of the gathering chains. The overlappingcarrying runs of the lifting and gathering chains runbackwardly over the snapping rolls, enabling the liftingchains to pick up downed cornstalks at ground level, liftthem around the front nose portion and engage the stalks attwo vertically spaced locations to hold them upright as thesnapping rolls advance and pull the stalks downwardlybetween the stripper plates.