Patent ID: 6468132
Filing Date: 2002-10-22
Classification: A01F

Abstract:
In a grinding assembly, for knives of a chopper drum that is rotatable about an axis and includes a width dimension between opposite ends spaced along said axis, including a grinding stone for grinding cutting edges of said knives and a stone positioning apparatus for selectively in-feeding said grinding stone toward said chopper drum in a direction transverse to said cutting edges and for effecting reciprocable movement of said grinding stone parallel to said axis across said width dimension between first and second reversal points, respectively, adjacent said opposite ends of said chopper drum so as to sweep along said cutting edges of said knives, where said grinding stone can be controlled to dwell at said first and second reversal points so as to have longer grinding times there than at locations between said reversal points, the improvement comprising: said stone positioning apparatus including a controller operable for selectively moving said grinding stone at different speeds across different segments of said width dimension, whereby said cutting edges of the knives located within each different segment in each case can be associated with differing grinding times.