Combines I was in Hesston last weekend and this is what I saw

[gleanermanitoba]

I know its not official figures but the last I heard about a year ago when talking to an Agco territory guy he said currently it was about 3 to one in favor of Gleaner in North America but the Massey line was gaining if you factor in european sales Massey probably is = or more. As far as I am concerned we run the Gleaner line and have since the 70's with an l2 them nade the change to an N6 in the 80's and our gleaners have done us well very few problems and until recent years they werwe as big a machine as there was in our experience. That being said they are not perfect we have had issues with the smaller feeder, a small discharge and not great chopping of straw and inconsistant spreading of that straw. In the past we have looked at the Massey machine but from talking to dealers got the impression that there wasn't much capacity difference between the two (in the same class) so why not stay with what you know and we have been able to get a better straw chop and spread as well as smooth out the feeding so we stayed grey_silver. That being said we had the opportunity to demo a an 8010, a CR970, and a lexion 570 last year and got to see what some of their strenghts and weeknesse were ( all colors have some of both). Then after looking at all the new class 8 machines at farm shows this winter and summer the Agco machines (both red and silver) impressed me with what I saw, the machines seem very simple as far as its mechanical side goes and in my mind solves some of the issues I have. I can't pass final judgement until I see one run first hand but as far as I am concerned I would be happy in one of either color, I don't belive in being married to any color or brand, you pick whats best for your operation. I do not understand all of the internal workings at Agco but realize that they have been focused more on a global scale in recent times and Massey is their biggest line. That being said I heard talk that they are begining to focus more on North America and hopefully that means stronger and more dealers that can sell any Agco machine regardless of color or brand and if that means red "r" machines and grey "A" machines so be it and this would keep most people happy I hope

 

[R_O_M]

I strongly suspect that there are other negatives to the split feed rotor as well as the feeding problem. The AC _ Duetz _ AGCO engineers have, out of neccessity, a very long experimental history developing and ironing out a huge range of problems in the Gleaner rotary system since the corn only N1. [ Out of curiosity they put the N1 into some wheat and it worked just as well! Told to Rolf by a guy who drove the N1 for AC.] Obviously there is a limit to how short a thresher can be configured and still get suffficient time and area to adequately carry out the threshing process and then there is the minimum length or minimum time that material must spend in the separator to be sort the grain out. I suspect that a lot of work went into shortening down the thresher and separator with the R40 _ R50 series being the end result and possibly as short a configuration that can still operate efficiently with minimum losses in both the threshing and separating systems. If we accept that the R 40's and 50's have about as short a processor as is practical to still get capacity, then two R 40_ 50 processors placed end to end, one a mirror image, with the discharge to both sides would be required. I haven't run the tape over this configuration to establish the overall width of such a processor but I suspect that it would finish up an extremely wide processor with admittedly, a huge capacity. Then there is the processor gear box drive to fit in. The elevators and the rest off the shake, rattle and roll bits could be fitted behind, under and around this giant processor. All said the machine would probably be much wider than the current state regulations in the USA would allow to be transported on your roads and that would be the end of the story as there would be no way of narrowing the machine down for transport. I am only guessing at the above although a tape measure would answer a lot of questions on a end to end R40_50 processors. I also think that we should give the AC and AGCO engineers some recognition in that they have probably already done the hard yards in figuring out just how short you can make an efficient processor and we have it in the R40_ 50's. That then puts the minimum length on a split and_or divided flow processor which then fixes all the other parameters that go to make up a combine..

 

[MostlyGreen]

Hello Tom, This probably isn't "news" but they actually use the "split-flow from header to cylinder_rotor" concept in Plot Combines right now. Kincaid Equipment has converted numerous TR's and conventionals for some time now. Granted, these combines wouldn't be used in high-capacity, high demand situations, but your concept is already working (to a lesser degree) in this application. http:__www.kincaidseedresearch.com_splitcombines.html

 

[T__langan]

OK, I got this fingered out. You make a good point about minimum length for proper separation. Next idea is to put a conventional style threshing cylinder and open concave directly ahead of the rotor. Grain_chaff from the open concave would drop directly into the accelerator rolls, straw and any remaining grain would feed into the rotor where the whole length can be used for final separation. Since a considerable portion of separation has already taken place at the concave, less length would be needed for rotary separation. Kind of like the Deere CTS only with a cross-flow separation rotor.