Combines N6 CAGE

you can get an agco processor kit from your local dealer, agco offer 3 different kits, all kits start withe a cage and grow from there, one kit has cylinder bars and accelerator lugs and cage sweep stuff, the price varies from the small kit to the big kit,..

Have him check with St john Welding. They provide cages to about everyone in the country and have a model which uses an offset pattern which works much better than agco. 800-459-3289

There are also some new things at loewen. They manufacture different styles of cages, which will improve threshing. You can select a P1 seperator cage with the larger holes like the P3, and is designed in other ways just like the P3, to the point where there is next to no more straw build up on the outside of the cage, and at times cage sweep no longer needed. They also have a new helical channel kit for the thresher and seperator that does a great job. It follows the same pattern of the flat helicals, with three transition helicals.800-667-5082 loewenmfg.com

What do you mean an offset pattern and why does it work betterIJ

Greg: Thanks for the recommendation. Here's a short explanation of the difference in threshing cages. When AGCO originally devised these machines, the cage used a 1" opening for separation. Problem was that with the helical mount arrangement and the opening size they would see more rotor loss than anyone wanted in larger crops--however, in wheat and milo good separation was still there. In order to help these losses, they then began using a cage with 1 1_4" tall by 1" wide openings. This helped the losses, but the taller opening also allowed more trash thru to the accelerator rolls, wearing them much more quickly and trashing the shoe more. These openings are in a straight line checkerboard pattern. About 10 or so years ago, we began to rework cages using a pattern which is staggered--that is the holes are offset 1_2 space instead of being in a staight line. This allows us to use smaller helical mounts for more open space. We also find more agitation off the cage surface for separation. This allows us to use the 1" square opening to hold trash inside the cage while maintaining separation. It's also the strongest of the 3 versions presently existing. There's a little more to this, but these are pretty much the basics. Hope this answers some questions. We have also developed a fully enclosed cylinder for these combines which uses either P3 or P1 processor bars, or a combo of both, and it's working out very well. Feel free to email with any questions or requests for info.

Hi Terry, We have one of your 1" steggered cages up here and it is working fine. I just though I would bring up a couple things that may have increased material to shoe. In the mid 80's Gleaner came with a corn door kit. The kit was for high yealding wet corn and included replacement doors that were made of 1"X 1 1_4" holes. The kit converted approx. 1_2 of the cage to the larger openings. I understand the kit reduced losses and if still to high some helicals from seperator side belly were to be removed. I wonder if that accelerated accelerator roll wear came with the production of the P3 which included twice as long concave, seperator grate, complete cage with 1X1 1_4" holes, and cylinder bars that did not go all the way to discharge opening not to mention 2, 4, or 6 reverse bars and 3 helicals on thresher side of larger machines dumping material back over feeder opening and then over concave a second time. Funny thing is there still was little to no problem with controling loss on shoe with all that extra material. I'm wondering Terry if your enclosed rotor comes with the extended bars to discharge. I see the picture on Nates' page has the stock length bars. It makes me sick to see that extended bars are still just an option for the 2000 Gleaner. What do you thinkIJ

I know I would sure like to hear what AGCO's explanation is for not making the extended bars standard equipment. If they do have a logical reason, why not fill us in on what it is - maybe we're overlooking something - not likely with the large group of us geniuses assembled here, but.......!