Two-way knife adjustment for crop harvester cutting cylinder

Abstract

The knife is normally clamped tightly against a supporting arm by a retaining bolt, but when the bolt is sufficiently loosened, the bolt itself and the knife through which it passes may be forced radially inwardly or outwardly by shifting a transversely reciprocable slide plate in the appropriate direction along its path of travel. An oblique slot in the slide plate receives the bolt and pushes it in the selected adjusting direction as the slot is displaced transversely by shifting of the plate. A pair of counter-acting set screws serve as means for shifting the plate and for releasably retaining the same in a selected position. A long key on the slide plate slidably fits into a mating key way on the supporting arm to guide the plate in its transverse movement, and because the key extends transversely of the path of in-and-out adjusting travel of the knife, it helps absorb and resist radial loading on the knife which occurs during the cutting operation.