US 5,855,108 AGranted

Alarm monitor for belt slip in a combine

AssigneeCase Corporation

InventorsMaury V. Salz, Dale W. Panoushek, Eric L. Walker

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Abstract

An agricultural vehicle, tractor, or combine includes a slip monitoring system for determining whether a slip condition exists. The agricultural vehicle includes a combustion engine which indirectly drives a piece of equipment such as a rotor. The rotor is mechanically coupled to the engine via a rotor-drive belt system including two belts and four pulleys. The slip monitoring system analyzes the speed of the rotor and the speed of the engine to determine if there is slippage between the belts and the pulleys. The system determines when a slip condition exists by comparing the ratio of the rotor speed to the engine speed to the ratio of the rotor speed to the engine speed under no-load conditions. When the system determines that the ratio is below the threshold, a display provides visual and audio warnings of the slip condition. The monitoring system is implemented as a software subroutine.

Claims20

Dependent claims

A slip monitoring system for use with farm machinery, the farm machinery including a mechanical power source operatively coupled to a piece of equipment, the mechanical power source driving the piece of equipment, the slip monitoring system comprising:

an equipment speed sensor in communication with the piece of equipment, the equipment speed sensor providing an equipment speed signal indicative of an equipment speed of the piece of equipment;
a power source speed sensor in communication with the mechanical power source, the power source speed sensor providing a power source speed signal indicative of a power source speed of the mechanical power source;
a control circuit communicating with the equipment speed sensor and the source speed sensor, the control circuit receiving the power source speed signal from the power source speed sensor and the equipment speed signal from the equipment speed sensor;
and
wherein the control circuit calculates a threshold value based on the power source speed signal under a no-load condition, the equipment speed signal under the no-load condition and a sensitivity factor, generates a slip warning signal in response to the equipment speed signal and the power source speed signal compared to the threshold value, and adjusts the threshold value after generating the slip warning signal.

2 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.