Combines Accelerator Rolls in seed production soybeans

I produce seed as well and my cleanout has got higher in the last several years with the same combine (axial flow),but the seed processor has replaced his cleaner with better ones and they size the seed closer which results in many cases as high as 8 to 10% cleanout. A year we have ample moisture the seeds are more uniform and a lower cleanout. With the AF I would have trouble with cracks in dry soybeans if I had too many returns. I hope that the return to acc. rolls will help that with the Gleaner.

Thanks Dave. I certainly will agree with you that the processors have tightend things up to make it harder for us to get a premium. Dry years like this one is especially bad because all the small seeds fall through the same sieve as the cracked ones when they do their gradeing. I'm looking for ways to improve my cleanout grade, while not loseing any beans out the back of my combine, even cracked ones that can be sold at elevator price. If they would pay us enough I'd run them through a portable seed cleaner before delivering to the processor. Ron

You might consider a sunnybroke gen2 rotor with all foreward bars and the high speed helicals and the wedge kit from Hurtt equipment, it will cost you four thousand dollars but you will love the results----you will have to look through several handfulls of beans to find a split one.

Ron, I do not think that the accelerator rolls are culprit in causing cracks in soybeans, especially if you are chucking the machine full and running hard. This fall, I am running Sunnybrook II rotor, loewen seperator grate with same holes as rest of seperator, wedge kit, hump kit, fast pitch helicals with some extended to discharge, and fine cut chopper from Gleaner. These changes are what Gleaner must consider for their order page for new machines in my opinion. I will give an update of performance later, but from my experience of doing seed beans, I think this will end up being the proverbial "cat's meow". later, RR

Don't ignore the clearance you have on the clean grain and return auger. Also the the bulk tank fill auger can crack when the tank gets full. For dry peas and chickpeas I cut down my clean grain, return and tank fill auger by about 1_2 inch then chromed the augers. I did this on my R62 and on the M before that. In both cases 100 bu wheat can still be handled without problem.

I assume you've done the hyperizing to flow straw in rotor at slow cylinder speeds. When first discovering that accelerator rolls can crack very dry edible beans we had slowed engine by approx 20%. When damage went away we left engine slowed and speeded cylinder back up to minimum of 200RPM. When damage was still gone we removed accelerator roll paddles and reved engine back up and damage still gone. Thats when we started playing with removeing various amounts of paddles. We found we could have no paddles intersecting each other or it would throw material down to hard. For the newer machines we just remove front set of paddles. I've heard of someone removeing 4 paddles around one tube then moving over a spot and removeing 4 more from oposite tube and so on as long as the right rear ones were still in place. It is really quite easy to try this and if it doesn't help then oh well. Next step is to reduce diameter of auger or raise it off floor a bit. Could also slow up clean grain about 10% with '92 slip clutch pulley or change out elevator jackshaft pulley with one approx 12.5" in diameter to slow up elevators and spreader by approx 20%. Not all us need clean grain to handle 200bu corn at high speed. I have slowed accelerator rolls on R50's but wouldn't be so easy on newer machines.