Sugarcane Harvester

Overview

A sugarcane harvester is a self-propelled machine that cuts standing cane, chops it into short billets, blows away the leafy trash, and loads clean billets into a haul-out wagon running alongside. It is a chopper harvester, the dominant modern type, built on a heavy Main Chassis with its own Diesel Engine and crawler running gear so it can work the wet, soft fields where cane is grown.

The whole machine is a single continuous flow path. Cane enters at the front, is cut at top and bottom, is dragged through a roller train, is chopped, is cleaned of leaf, and leaves as billets out the elevator, all while the harvester drives steadily down the row.

How it works

The Topper & Crop Dividers spins off the leafy green tops first, and spiral crop dividers lift lodged cane and funnel the row into the throat. The Base Cutter then severs the stalks at ground level with twin angled bladed discs driven by a hydraulic motor and Helical Gear Pair. The cut cane is grabbed by the Feed Roller Train, a series of opposed fluted rollers that align the stalks butt-first and feed them rearward at a controlled rate.

At the back of the feed train the Chopper Drum uses counter-rotating drums of knives to cut the cane into uniform billets a few hundred millimetres long. Billets and trash then pass the Trash Extractors fans: a large primary fan above the chopper and a secondary fan over the elevator head, each built on a Stator Assembly and Rotor Assembly, suck the light leaf trash up and out so mostly clean billets continue.

The cleaned billets ride up the Billet Elevator, a slatted chain conveyor, and pour into a wagon driven alongside. The machine rides on the Running Gear, front rubber tracks for flotation and rear steer wheels, and the operator works from the Operator Cab with a Seat Assembly and a touch LCD Panel terminal. Base cutter height, feed and elevator are all powered through the Hydraulic System pump stack.