Patent ID: 7658059

Claim:
A drive arrangement for reciprocating a pair of movable elongated sickle bar sections on a harvester that are linearly reciprocated in opposite directions, a separate power drive to individually drive each of the sickle bar sections in reciprocating paths, a separate sensor to sense a position of each of the sickle bar sections at a known location of the respective reciprocating paths, a controller coupled to receive signals from the sensors based upon the sensed positions of the sickle bar sections and providing an output, and at least one of the power drives being operable to vary the speed of operation of the sickle bar section driven by the at least one power drive, and the at least one power drive being coupled to the controller to receive the output to control the speed of operation of the sickle bar section driven by the at least one power drive to synchronize the signals from the sensors indicating that the reciprocating sickle bar sections have reached the known location of the respective reciprocating path.