Cotton Stripper

Overview

A cotton stripper harvests cotton by stripping the entire boll off the plant, taking the lint, the seed, and the surrounding bur and stem in one action. This sets it apart from a cotton picker, which uses spindles to pull only the lint out of open bolls. Stripping is faster and the machine is simpler and cheaper, but it brings far more trash into the cotton, so the stripper carries a field cleaner to pull most of that trash back out. Stripping suits short-stature, storm-proof cotton varieties grown in regions where the whole crop matures and opens at once.

The cotton flows through the machine in order. The Stripping Row Units strip the bolls from the plants, the Conveying System carries the stripped cotton back and up, the Field Cleaner (Bur Extractor) removes burs and sticks, and the Cotton Basket stores the cleaned cotton until it is dumped. The Diesel Engine drives the Hydraulic System and the processing elements, the Drivetrain propels the machine, and the Operator Cab is the operator's station.

Stripping Row Units

The Stripping Row Units do the harvesting. Each row passes between a Brush Roll and a Bat Roll turning toward each other. The brush roll carries nylon Brush Element bristles that grip the cotton, while the bat roll carries fluted Bat Element bats that beat the bolls loose. Working together, the two rolls pull the whole boll, bur and all, off the stalk and throw it upward into the conveying auger. A Plant Guide feeds each row centered into the rolls, and the Row Unit Frame sets the roll height to suit the plant. All rolls are driven in time by the Row Unit Drive gearbox. Because the rolls take everything off the plant, the stripper does not wait for every boll to open the way a picker does, which is why it can clear a field in a single pass.

Conveying System

Stripped cotton is bulky and light, so it is moved partly by auger and partly by air. The Conveying System starts with a Cross Auger that gathers the cotton from all row units to one point. From there the Conveying Fan, a high-volume fan with a Fan Rotor, blows the cotton through the Conveying Duct up to the field cleaner and on to the basket. Air conveying handles the loose, fluffy material well, where a chain or belt would jam.

Field Cleaner

Stripping brings a large amount of trash, burs, stems, and leaf, into the cotton, and a gin charges more to clean very dirty cotton. The Field Cleaner (Bur Extractor), also called a bur extractor, removes most of it on the machine. The Extractor Saw Cylinder cylinders carry toothed Saw Blade discs that grip the seed cotton lint while stationary grid bars comb the burs and sticks out of it. A Doffer Brush doffer then lifts the cleaned cotton off the saw teeth and returns it to the conveying air, while the extracted trash drops to the Trash Auger and is discharged back onto the field. The Field Cleaner Drive turns the saw cylinders, the brush, and the trash auger. The field cleaner is the feature that makes stripper-harvested cotton acceptable to the gin.

Basket and Discharge

Cleaned cotton collects in the Cotton Basket. Loose cotton is so bulky that an empty basket would fill in minutes, so a powered Cotton Compactor packs it down: a Tramper Paddle driven by the Tramper Cylinder presses the cotton into the Basket Body to raise its density and let the basket hold far more between dumps. When full, the operator raises and tilts the basket on the Dump Cylinder pair to empty it into a boll buggy or a module builder that runs alongside, then returns to harvesting. On newer machines this step feeds directly into an onboard round-module builder, but the dump-to-buggy layout remains common.

Engine and Drivetrain

The Diesel Engine is a turbocharged common-rail diesel of 150 to 280 kW. Its Cooling Pack uses a self-cleaning rotary screen, which matters more here than on most machines: cotton lint that builds up against a hot radiator or exhaust is a real fire risk, so keeping the cooling core clear is a safety item, not just a performance one. The Drivetrain is hydrostatic, with a Hydrostatic Pump feeding wheel motors so the operator gets stepless speed from one lever. Power reaches the ground through planetary Final Drive units on the front Drive Wheel pair, and a steered Steered Rear Axle gives tight headland turns.

Hydraulics, Cab, and Electronics

The Hydraulic System system powers the header lift, the compactor, the basket dump, and the steering from a pair of Hydraulic Pump units through the Control Valve Bank bank and the Hydraulic Tank. The Operator Cab is sealed and pressurised against the heavy lint and dust, with a Multifunction Handle for speed, header, compactor, and dump, and a Operation Monitor showing machine data and a Cotton Yield Sensor reading for yield mapping. The Electrical System system runs from a belt-driven Alternator, with the Wiring Harness and Machine Controller coordinating the engine, drives, and the header and basket functions. Together these systems let one operator strip several rows of cotton at a steady pace, clean it on the move, and deliver gin-ready cotton without a second handling step in the field.