Combines Question about St John enclosed rotor

Here is a link to St John Welding and a picture of their rotor. Give them a call for their story.

Good points in my opinion. Shouldn't end up with an out of balance problem from uneven dust build up. Sweeps keep tough material moving. less bars to break up cobs. Full length bars while coupled with extra helical will make better use of perforated discharge area. Only bad thing I've heard is a bar mount letting loose. Be sure to double up or double check welds especially if running 1000 RPM crops. Take care

In actual fact, we had mounts break loose on 2 rotors due to weld positioning and technique, since resolved (before we built the rotor mentioned above). Repair was actually pretty straightforward and easily accomplished. Probably should also mention that although the concaves in these machines were damaged and were replaced by us, other peripheral damage was quite a bit less than if a mounting bracket or rotor bar had come loose on an OEM standard rotor.

Why do you not stagger the cylinder bars like some others. Does it make any difference. What size diameter rotor are you building. Is Gleaner going to use your rotorIJ

Tried staggering bars -- seemed to work OK in wheat and beans but couldn't feed wet milo and had problems shattering cobs in high moisture corn. Rotor diameter is 25" -- 1_4" smaller than original. Don't know for sure what AGCO is doing -- a little over a year ago I emailed photos and info to one of their engineers at Duluth, GA. They have habit of using other folks' designs without communication. This happened with the White_Massey rotors several years ago. I hear thru the grapevine, however, that what they're doing is pretty identical to our design. In the email I supplied the patent number, but their legal department is much larger that ours. KInd of like trying to fight city hall.

Didn't mean to knock your rotor at all. I have thought and still do think it is an excellent design. Sorry to hear of anyones rotor lose a bar or mount and they All can do it. It is great that things don't totally explode when something comes off or machine eats a few of the things that can be picked up in the field. Best of luck and take care

Dan: Didn't take your post as a knock against our rotor. Short replies sometimes sound angry, but aren't meant to be so. Sorry -- Terry

Jerry, owner of Midway Farm Equipment, Mountain lake, MN told me he demoed an R62 with a SunnyBrook Generation 2 alongside his R62 this fall. Both machines setup the same except for the rotors. The Sunny had less (near 0) vibration at both high (800 rpm) and low (under 200 rpm). Whereas the Gleaner rotor shook the machine if dust was allowed to fall. They were able to use a torque meter to show power draw of the rotors. The Sunny needed 15%-17% less torque. There was less cob breakage with the Sunny. He said the staggered bar configuration rumbled less than the proir configuration of bars in a row. Jerry sold 7 that day (at $3500 each).

I don't know at what RPM the dust on back of bars make a difference but surely it does when running certain conditions of wheat. One guy pointed it out to me that he really liked the enclosed Sunnybrook for he didn't get the dust storm when engaging machine. lots of guys in Canada installed the earlier Sunnybrook P1 rotor in there newer machines for much better performance. One of the reasons they saw the improvement was the P1 cylinder bars (especially the reverse ones) weren't as aggresive and the bars were extended to and into discharge. If you have seen the large P3 rotors that were stock for 10 years you would see why the bars have to be extended to get to material discharge. Sunnybrook Gen 2 has kickers to move material the last few inches. Do you know number of reverse bars on Gleaner rotor they took out and if bars were extended to discharge or if the Sunnybrook had reverse barsIJ Did they have some sort of torque sensing devise on combine or was that the number Sunnybrook is advertising from there testingIJ I've heard plenty good about the Gen 2 but just like to compair apples to apples. Thanks

I called Jerry this afternoon, I was wrong about a few things. The comparison was between his own R62 with bars into the discharge, no reverse bars, and a new R65 with a factory installed Gen 2 SunnyBrook. The Gleaner final version will be slightly diferent. The 15%-17% less torque information was told to Jerry by a sales Rep. No reverse bars on the Sunny. What sold most farmers was less broken cobs loading the shoe, whole cobs allow a wider chaffer opening. Jerry does have one problem though, with staggered bars on the Sunny they can't figure out how to install one, the forklift forks don't quite fit. If anyone knows how to install one in a Gleaner his email address is midway@rconnect.com his phone number is 1-800-657-3249