Crop harvesting machine

Claim 1

In a mower conditioner, an ambulatory frame, a stationary platform thereon having front and rear edges and sloping upwardly and rearwardly from the front edge to the rear edge, a pair of cooperative substantially horizontally disposed crop conditioning rollers mounted on the frame adjacent to said rear edge of the platform, mowing means mounted on the platform adjacent to its forward edge and comprising a plurality of cutters each having a disk mounted for rotation about an upright axis and each presenting an unobstructed upper crop-receiving surface, knife blades mounted in each disk and projective beyond the periphery thereof, said disks disposed in a substantially common plane, said cutters arranged in cooperative pairs rotating in opposite directions toward each other forwardly of the platform and effective to cut the crops and discharge them onto the respective disks, said disks sloping upwardly and rearwardly and rotating at high speeds and serving as conveying means for slinging the cut crops rearwardly and upwardly therefrom onto the platform, and a reel serving as supplementary conveying means mounted from the frame for rotation about a generally horizontal axis above the cutters and having peripheral fingers operative to sweep residual cut material from the rear portions of the disks and the platform and move the crops upwardly and rearwardly over the platform directly into the conditioning rollers.