Combines BiRotor

[Turk]

I know Mark Underwood who designed the birotor and talked to him about 10 days ago. From what he has gathered from John Deere there are no plans for it. There are a couple of things in the 9650 that came from his design. He is now pushing his Bad Boy tree saw that mounts on a skid loader to cut trees out of pastures. It has no moving parts and works slick. He also designed the feederhouse dust fan in the later John Deere Combines.

 

[Cutter]

If it were left only to stupid CEO's I doubt the ag industry would be in the fix it is. The bi-rotor truely has revolutionary merit.

 

[UpFr]

CEO's don't get to be CEO's by being stupid. They do on occassion make some questionable decisions based on questionable information provided by their lackies.

 

[ihc_afc]

Did he tell you what Deere paid him for it, or if he was upset in any way that they killed the idea of furthur development of the BirotorIJIJIJ Did he share any feelings on what he thought of the STSIJIJ Just curious!

 

[hobbyfarm]

I'm curious on this birotor is this the unit where the cage rotated along with the rotorIJ JD was suppose to bought up the patent rights. I believe they built it around a small IH rotor but had more capacity than the largests unit of the day. denny

 

[dakota]

Yes, the concave rotates with the rotor but much slower. Due to the rotation there is no concave clearence to adjust, only rotor speed. The first birotor was built into a IH 1480. But it has little to do with the IH rotor. The birotor is only 4 feet long and has no thresshing elements or cylinder bars, just paddles and very little veines and therefor very little wear. The XBR2 has very few moving parts and only one auger in the whole machine. JD bought the patent and shelved it, just so CAT wouldn't built it.

 

[dakota]

He didn't tell me what Deere paied and I didn't ask. Of course he didn't like it that Deere shelved it. Mark wanted a long lasting, high capacity and simple machine for the farmer. He didn't think much of the STS. I told him that we blew holes in our rotor housings. And he answered that's why the birotor has a 360 degree concave, because the grain wants to come out and on an STS it can't. The XBR2 had belts only on one side of the machine for the shoe, the concave and the fan. If you needed access to the rotor you just pulled two pins and backed up the machine. The header holds the feeder house. The feederhouse stays attached to the rotor and everything slides out of the combine on a rail like a kitchen drawer.

 

[SilverTurnedGreen]

If I recall correctly, CAT decided to "can" the idea of the Bi-Rotor PRIOR to Deere's purchase of the technology, at least according to the book Dream Reaper! FarmBuddy would be a valuable person to contribute to this thread, as he was involved with the project as well. He mentioned in a prior thread that CAT put the Bi-Rotor up against a competitive European brand combine (but not a Claas) and decided that the project was too "unproven" and "capital intensive" to proceed. I can only hope that Deere will eventually encumber some of this technology into there future machines!

 

[John_W]

I think it is more about WHO you know than what you know. And having a board of directors that is sleeping on the job. The AOl guy quit yesterday after astutely running the stock into the ground. Probably got a couple million bucks to go on his way. Being a mean dishonest SOB helps for being a CEO too, or so it seems lately.

 

[dakota]

Being smart enough to become a CEO dosen't mean that the person is smart enough to run the company and serve the customers. Or we wouldn't have all these companies going broke and being in trouble like Enron, Chrysler, Fiat, United, Worldcom, AOl, ....