Note: Descriptions are shown in the official language in which they were submitted.
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l FIELD OF THE INVENI~ION
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The present invention relates to a portable,
mechanical cone picker for removing and collecting pine
cones from felled pine trees.
BACKGR_UND_OF_ HE INVENTION_
As a result of reforestation requirements due to
forest fires and the like, it is becoming more and more
necessary to plant new pine trees. This, of course,
requires the collecting and gathering of pine cones for
the planting. To date, handpicking is the most widely
used method for collecting and gathering the cones;
however, this method is extremely labour intensive with
relatively low productivity.
Suggestions have been made to improve the yield of
collected pine cones. For example, Canadian patent
1,084,277 issued August 26, 1980 to Charles E. Chilson
discloses a pine cone collecting arrangement which is
lowered by helicopter over a growing tree and which is
used to comb the cones from the tree. However as will be
appreciated, such an arrangement is extremely costly to
use due to the expenses incurred in operating the
helicopter.
Another reason for the need to reforest results
from expansive tree felling operations carried out by
logging companies for the production of pulp and paper.
These logging companies remove thousands of trees from a
single site and then move on to a new site. Much debris
including the tops and the branches of the trees are left
behind at each site. It is from this debris that the
hand picking of pine cones usually occurs.
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1 SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention provides a mechanical cone
picker which is relatively labour free and inexpensive to
operate. More particuarly, the mechanical cone picker of
the present invention, which is adapted to remove and
collect pine cones from pieces of pine trees fed into the
picker comprises a housing portion, an infeed region to
and an outfeed region from the housing portion, a
thrashing mechanism between the infeed region and the
outfeed region and a cone gathering region in the
housing. The thrashing mechanism comprises a pair of
positively driven rotatable thrashers provided with
outwardly extending flailing portions which are adapted
to beat the pine cones from the trees. These flailing
portions according to the present invention having a
limited flex so that they are capable of stripping the
cones realtively undamaged from the pine tree without
unduely breaking the tree itself up within the machine.
This feature of the present invention substantially
eliminates downtime of the machine which would otherwise
be required to clean and/or repair damage caused by the
broken tree pieces.
The mechanical cone picker of the present invention
i8 preferably portable for moving to different locations
to increase the yield of pine cones picked.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
The above as well as other advantages and features
of the present invention will be described in greater
detail according to the preferred embodiments of the
present invention in which:
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1 Figure 1 is an end plan view of one form of a
mechanical cone picker, according to a preferred
embodiment of the present invention;
Figure 2 is a side plan view of the cone picker
shown in Figure l;
Figure 3 is a sectional view taken along the lines
3-3 of Figure 2; and
Figure 4 is a sectional view along the lines 4-4 of
Figure 2.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION_OF THE PREFE_RED EMBODIMENTS_
Referring to Figures 1 and 2, a mechanical cone
picker comprises a housing portion 1 having an infeed
region 3 for feeding the pine trees pieces into the
housing. These pine trees pieces will take the form of
previously cut or naturally felled pine tree portions or
entire relatively small pine trees. The housing further
includes an outfeed region 9 through which the deconed
pine tree portions are passed out of the rear of the
device.
Each of the infeed ancl outfeed regions includes a
roller arrangement at which the pine tree portions are
nipped for moving them through the housing. The forward
infeed side includes an upper roller 5 and a lower roller
7, while the rearward outfeed side includes an upper
roller 11 and a lower roller 13. Each of the lower
rollers, according to the embodiments shown in the
drawings, is fixed in position, while upper rollers 5 and
11 are set up through a control mechanism where roller 11
sits within an elongated slot 12 and is linked to roller
5 by a pair of pivotal links L to allow floatation of the
11573~7
1 upper rollers relative to the lower rollers.
Accordingly, both the infeed and the outfeed sides of the
mechanical cone picker are adapted to accommodate varying
si~es of pine trees and pine tree portions. The upper -
rollers float upwardly when a relatively large tree
portion is run through the housing. However the weight
of the upper rollers bearing down on the top of the tree
portion is more than adequate to provide positive drive
at the nip between the upper and lower rollers to drive
the tree portion completely through the housing. This
drive is enhanced by the construction of the rollers,
each of which has a toothed periphery for better gripping
of the tree. As will be understood from Figure 3, the
smaller the tree portion, the farther the upper roller
drops downwardly to decrease the nip gap between the
upper and lower rollers. For safety purposes, a pair of
on/off control levers 14 are provided at either side of
the machine for activating and deactivating the rotation
of the infeed and outfeed rollers.
As is also shown in Figure 3, the device includes
an internal thrashing mechanism comprising a lower
thrasher wheel 23 and an upper thrasher wheel 27. The
thrashing mechanism is driven off a motor and pulley
as~embly M at the end of the machine shown in Figure 1.
This same assembly, which is also used to drive the feed
rollers, includes a control 26 for controlling operation
of the trashers independently of the rollers. The lower
thrasher is provided with flailers 25, while the upper
thrasher is provided with flailers 29. The thrasher
wheels are positively driven so as to rotate the flailers
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1 in opposing directions, as indicated in Figure 3. The
timing for the thrasher rotation is such that flailers 25
and 29 are out of sinc so that they do not interfere with
one another during rotation of the thrashers.
In the preferred form as shown in Figure 3, the
infeed and the outfeed rollers are generally at the same
level with one another to define an essentially straight
feed path from the front to the back of the device.
Flailers 25 and 29 whip through this feed path to flail
both the branches and the trunk of a pine tree portion
fed through the device.
Flailers 25 and 29, although adequately rigid to
properly strip the pine cones from the tree, are somewhat
flexible to accommodate different diameters of pine trees
fed through the thrashing mechanism and to reduce damage
to the cones stripped by the flailers. In addition the
limited flexibility of the flailers substantially
eliminates the breaking off of larger limbs from the pine
tree which would otherwise collect in the machine and
possibly jam the thrashers.
The pine cones and other small debris such as pine
needles which are stripped from the pine tree, are
gravity fed along a bottom ramp 35 within the housing to
a cone collecting region 17 at the bottom of the
housing. The cone collecting region is separated from
the thrashers by a screen 19 which is adapted to permit
the cones to filter through to the cone collector while
trapping any large tree pieces that are loose in the
thrashing chamber of the machine. The cone collecting
region is provided with a separation chamber 31 having a
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1 filter bottom 32 adapted for filtering the cones from the
other debris stripped by the thrashing mechanism.
Located above the separation chamber is a blower 33 for
blowing the debris, other than the pine cones, outwardly
past filter 32 through a chute at the bottom of the cone
collecting region. Separation chamber 31 is removable
from the housing for emptying the chamber from the
housing after it has been filled with pine cones.
This particular embodiment, as shown in the
drawings, is provided with a wheel arrangement 21
supporting the housing to enable transport of the device
from one location to another. As will be appreciated,
other types of means for moving the structure, such as a
tread arrangement or the like, could be provided on the
base of the housing.
Although various preferred embodiments of the
invention have been described herein in detail, it will
be understood by those skilled in the art that variations
may be made thereto without departing from the spirit of
the invention or the scope of the appended claims.
