Side sheet for an impeller mower-conditioner

Claim 1

In an impeller mower-conditioner for advancing over a field to cut, condition and windrow crop material including a frame having opposite sides, a transverse cutter assembly carried by the frame and having a plurality of side-by-side rotary disk cutting elements for cutting the crop material and delivering it rearwardly as the mower-conditioner advances, each cutting element being rotatable about an upright axis and including opposite left- and right-hand end cutting elements rotatable in clockwise and counterclockwise directions respectively as viewed from above, said cutter assembly including a ground-engaging surface terminating inwardly of an end of the cutter assembly and disposed below the disk elements to maintain the disk elements above the ground, an impeller rotor transversely and rotatably mounted in the frame and disposed above the cutter assembly so as to intercept crop material delivered rearwardly by the cutting elements, a hood carried by the frame and extending between the opposite sides and substantially covering the rotor and cutter assembly and having a top including a transversely extending conditioning hood portion approximately concentric with the rotor and extending over approximately the forward upper quadrant of the rotor in a crop material controlling and conditioning relationship and a rearward extending deflector hood portion, drive means for rotating the cutting elements and drive means for rotating the impeller rotor so that crop material intercepted by the rotor is carried over the top of the rotor under the hood and discharged rearwardly into the deflector portion or the hood and so that air is entrained and carried with the crop material, the improvement in the hood comprising: an upright fore-and-aft extending side sheet including an upper portion disposed alongside an end of the rotor and extending to meet the top portions of the hood and including a forward lower portion having a fore-and-aft extending upright wall closely adjacent the laterally extreme periphery of an end disk cutting element, said lower forward portion having a crop dividing edge sloping forwardly and upwardly and disposed so that in the plane of the disk cutting element the edge approximately intersects a transverse line defined by the foremost reach of the periphery of the side-by-side cutting elements, and a bottom edge lying in a plane approximately parallel to the plane of the disk cutting elements but substantially below said plane and above the plane of the ground-engaging surface of the cutter assembly so that as the machine advances, the dividing edge divides the standing crop to facilitate the cutting function of the end disk cutting element and the wall portion adjacent the bottom edge provides a safety shield for the end disk element and the side sheet confines and controls crop material cut by the end disk cutting element and crop material and air moved and entrained by the rotor.