Stripper (agriculture)
[1] Unlike a conventional combine harvester, this machine collects grain by stripping the spikes only, without cutting the culms at their base.
Leaving the harvest in the field can lead to partial or even total loss of its value due to adverse weather conditions, fires, and wildlife.
During the threshing process, which is preceded by cutting, a significant amount of straw passes through the combine, limiting the vehicle's speed.
[1] In traditional harvesting, a certain amount of energy – and thus fuel used in the combine – is consumed for cutting plant stems, transporting, deforming during threshing, and separating.
It had the advantage over the early reaper machines in being able to reap more quickly (of benefit in a hot climate) and having fewer components subject to wearing out.
[2] During this time, a large number of strippers were developed, produced, and tested by inventors, but only a few were implemented in production and applied in agriculture.
[2] The first mentions of methods for harvesting only the spikes of grain using a primitive machine can be found in the Natural History of Pliny the Elder, written for the Roman Emperor Titus.
Alongside the cart walked a person with a T-shaped tool (a long stick with a smaller one transversely mounted at the end).
[12] The main task of stripping machines – i.e., separating spikes from stalks – was made possible by the comb and the active T-shaped tool.
[8] Ridley's innovations included a four-wheeled cart that was steered using the rear wheels, with horses harnessed at the back to drive the machine.
Instead of a person breaking off the spikes, the front drum used paddles to partially thresh the grain as it rotated and transport it to the basket.
[2] Thanks to the improved steering and mechanization of the threshing process, John Ridley's stripper-harvester could clear 4 hectares in a single working day, which was comparable to the labor output of 10 reapers in the same time and space.
In 1916, thanks to enhancements by Hadley Shepherd, the company began producing new strippers equipped with a cutting device beneath the comb, allowing the threshed material to be transported by a conveyor.
[8] In 1868, agronomist Andrei Vlasenko from the Tver Governorate presented a agricultural machine called the Horse Harvester for Collecting Grain on the Stalk, which combined a mower, transportation devices, and a thresher.
[13][14] In the second half of the 20th century, work resumed on improving harvesting methods using strippers,[1] which, according to scientist Leonid Pogorelov, should replace traditional combines.
[15] Unlike older designs, the new stripper featured an active working tool shaped like a cylindrical drum (rotor), along whose edges rows of combs were mounted.
[16] Independently of the English, a similar solution was developed in the early 1980s by Petro Shabanov, head of the harvesting machinery laboratory at the Agricultural Mechanization Institute in Melitopol (now Tavria State Agrotechnological University), who created two-drum machines.
Single-drum harvesters are structurally simpler;[17] they contain a stripping drum (rotor), a cutting unit, a stabilizing disc, and a feeder.
Later innovations were including a cutter bar similar to the binder reaper and an elevator to lift the heads into a storage bin for later threshing.
