Crop materials, such as straw, hay or other like forage, or animal bedding, are often baled for storage and transportation. In some instances, it is necessary to break the bale apart in order to spread the crop material for animal bedding or to dispense the crop material as feed.
A machine to disintegrate bales of crop material is sometimes known as a baled crop material processor. A typical machine is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,830,292 which issued to Frey on May 16, 1989. A baled crop material processor basically comprises a container for receiving the bales, a disintegrator often in the form of a roller with cutters or flails for chopping or shredding the material from the bale, a mechanism including manipulator rollers to direct the bale to the disintegrator and a discharge slot such that the crop material is discharged from the bail processor. Any number of manipulator rollers are possible, however, the disintegrator is located between and below two of the manipulator rollers. The baled crop material is supported and rotated by the rollers. As the crop material bale rotates the disintegrator breaks apart the outer portion of the baled crop material first and then proceeds to break apart the crop material towards the centre of the bale until the crop material is completely broken apart. As the baled crop material is disintegrated, the loose crop material is driven by the flails to be discharged from the machine through the discharge slot. The discharged crop material can be formed into windrows or discharged into feed bunks to be used as feed or it may be scattered to be used as animal bedding.
One of the major problems which appears to occur with baled crop material processors is that they tend to jam. This occurs when loose crop material wraps around the manipulator rollers or passes between the manipulator rollers and the walls of the container. Jams are generally dislodged by reversing the direction of rotation of the manipulator rollers. It has been found that jamming rarely occurs when the bale is firm, the result being that the only loose crop material that is produced, is by the disintegrator in the disintegrator opening between the manipulator rollers; this loose crop material is immediately driven out of the processor through the discharge slot. Loose crop material may be created by the manipulator rollers themselves, the rotation of the bale may shake it apart or the engaging action of the rollers may tear or break the crop material bale apart.
Usually, as the crop material bale rotates, the amount of crop material disintegrated is not uniform from the outside to the inside of the crop material bale. This occurs because the outside is usually much harder than the inside, that is the inside is more loosely baled. Thus, when the exterior of the crop material bale is being disintegrated, that is at the start of the process, the crop material bale is hard. Rotating a hard crop material bale is relatively easy, and therefore uniform disintegration takes place along the periphery of the crop material bale. Furthermore, the crop material bale only breaks apart in the area of disintegration, the other parts of the periphery remain intact due to the hardness of the bale. However, once the softer, inner core of the crop material is reached, the crop material bale is often too loose to remain intact. Therefore, the softer, inner core is sometimes difficult to rotate. The softer inner core tends to break apart because of the rotation, and this loose crop material can cause jamming and impede rotation of the manipulator rollers.
Also, the teeth on the manipulator rollers engage the crop material bale to effect the rotation. This engaging action tends to grab the crop material bale. This grabbing action can be very similar to the disintegration action, and hence loose crop material can be created. Furthermore, the grabbing action may not release the crop material bale and hence pull the crop material around the roller causing a wrap around situation.
Moreover, if the crop material bale moves longitudinally and impacts the front or back wall of the container, then the crop material may be torn from the bale by the wall or the rotation of the crop material bale may be impeded by the contact with the wall of the container. Often, the result of this impeded rotation is that the teeth of the manipulator rollers tend to break the crop material bale apart, and this crop material may jam the roller, which is undesirable.
A further difficultly is to control bales of irregular shape such as rectangular bales, frozen bales or bales that have been stored for a period of time and are flat on one side. Sometimes, irregularly shaped bales can cause a jam to occur since they do not rotate properly.
For the foregoing reasons, there is a need to provide a crop material processor for disintegrating baled crop material capable of keeping to a minimum the amount of loose crop material in the processor that may cause jamming.