US 4,275,550 AGranted

Crop baler

AssigneeHesston Corporation

InventorsEdward L. Swenson, Howard L. Ratzlaff

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Abstract

As the baler advances across the field picking up windrowed crop material, the material is continuously packed into the lower, open end of an upwardly curved duct leading to the bottom of the main baling chamber. A loading fork sweeps upwardly through the duct at regular intervals to stuff an accumulated charge of materials up into the baling chamber from the duct, and a packer at the mouth of the duct continuously adds new material to the duct at such a rate as to precompress the charge of materials accumulating within the duct prior to stuffing thereof into the bale chamber. If the precompressed charge reaches a certain predetermined density level between stuffing cycles, the duct may expand transversely via a spring-loaded sidewall thereof to keep the charge from substantially exceeding the selected density level yet permit the uninterrupted infeed of still further material pending the next operation of the loading fork.

Claims9

Dependent claims

A crop baler including:

an elongated bale forming chamber having a laterally disposed opening therein;
compacting mechanism including a plunger continuously reciprocable within said chamber longitudinally thereof across said opening to open and close the latter;
an elongated, tubular duct projecting laterally outwardly from said chamber in registration with said opening;
means positioned at a mouth at the outer end of said duct for continuously feeding crop material into the duct to accumulate a charge thereof;
a loader associated with said duct for stuffing successively accumulating charges from the duct into said chamber in timed relationship to reciprocation of said plunger, and at regular intervals,
said duct being transversely expandable from a minimum volume position toward a maximum volume position;
and
control means for preventing said expansion of the duct unless the density of a charge of material accumulating in said duct reaches a certain predetermined level,
said duct having a wall thereof extending along the path of travel of material from the feeding means into the duct and yieldably shiftable transversly of said path of travel for permitting said expansion of the duct.

6 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.