Studies on the Thinner used far the Tiller (I)

On the Design of the Thinner

Abstract

We tried to make a down-the-row thinner which used for the tiller. It was a mounted 3-row machine (Fig. 1) employing land-wheel drive to rotate the three independent cutting heads. The rolling radius of the cutting head is 203/4 in. Those could be fitted with 8 or 16 L-shaped blades and an iron depth wheel (7 in. diameter) was clamped to each unit. The blade is 1 in. long which is shown in fig. 2.
According to the design of this machine, the cutting (thinning) width is about 6 in. when the depth of the blade is 9/16 in. The gear ratio gave 40 in. of forward travel for each revolution of the cutting heads when there was no slip of the driving wheels. At the 16 blades, the length of row cut is 46%
The diameter of driving shaft and cutting-shaft were 7/8 in. and 3/4 in respectively. In the case of wheel carrying and head running, it was no trouble when those shaft are used. An external force at the blade was about 3-4kg. The reaction by the turning effort of the tiller was almost negligible. The hitch of this machine is designed, so that it can be removed the external twisting and bending force.