Combines R 85 and R 95

interesting dairyfarmer

That's very interesting. It would be great to know how the NH split the flow as well as how the big Versatile pull type did it. Gleaner has unused width within currant box size. I'm not saying it wouldn't take some inovative engineering. I would say I wouldn't compare the capability of early rotaries to handle tough and or tender straws with some of todays rotor and helical designs. I also question at what point the Gleaner would have to go wider when there is room to go larger diameter now. At least a couple manufactures have had larger diameter for a long time. Anyway while searching patents on rotors I found NH has piles of claims on their currant split flow and nothing on split flow into transverse design. The numbers I found on NH far outnumbered other manufatures. Maybe they portected split flow into transverse design with some European patents. Thanks for info for I likly would of missed that topic on NH talk.

I often wondered why Gleaner didn't pursue placing a second transverse-mounted rotor directly behind the first one. You could "tweak" the first rotor for threshing only, while the second rotor could be set for optimum separation. In fact, make each rotor-speed seperately adjustable as well. I know this compromises the simplicity which the Gleaner now boasts, plus, there's undoubtedly engineering ramnifications to deal with, but I think it would still make for a very simple, efficient system.

Many years ago, in about the very late 70's, our local Allis dealer here in Oz had a company sponsored trip to the USA to have a look over the Allis products and set up. He came back with a story of walking down the block a few hundred metres from the Allis dealer to the JD dealers in one town. There, sitting on the block was a JD prototype combine with a split flow transverse rotor in it. JD's apparently never did get it to work as the material would not split and flow evenly to both sides and would suddenly switch to all flowing into one side or the other of the rotor. The early New Holland twin rotors in the late 1970's had the same problems in light crops below about a tonne a hectare as we witnessed in NSW when the owner of a new NH twin rotor got the agent to come and fix the problem of the flow going into one rotor or the other. The agent took one look, told the owner " they were never designed to harvest crops as light as this", got back into his car and drove off. Can't repeat what the owner said!

Dan, As I sit here and look at an actual piece of literature for the Versatile Trans_Axial 2000 pull type combine it is interesting how they went about threshing and seperating. I quote from their printed material."A 32" diameter by 79" long threshing rotor positioned across the front of the combine.A full 42" flow of crop is fed directly to the center of the threshing rotor for primary threshing over a 105 degree of concave.The crop then travels around the threshing rotor and material spirals around the cage and rasp bars on the rotor make contact with the crop,producing a multi-pass threshing action and then the material is split by vanes at the top of the rotor housing. Once the material has been threshed and split,it is fed to two axial mounted seperating rotors which spin in opposite directions at 1000 rpm. Blades at the front of each rotor draw the material in,and paddles mounted on the rotors spin it. Vanes positioned in the top half of the rotor housing keep the material spiralling rearward,approx. 5 times before being discharged. Seperation continues around the rotors,with the grain dropping through the seperator grates below.Rotor housing diameters 5" bigger than the rotors permits fast and uninterrupted throughput at high speeds." There you have a few secrets of where some of our N-Series mods. came from. I agree that a wider cylinder with split flow design would not be that tough to engineer. Another thing that should be looked at is splitting the existing cylinder and have a planetary system that would allow the seperating end to be run faster than the threshing end. I think this would greatly increase capacity. Think back to the early 80's and see how far we have come since then. I think the next generation of Gleaner is entirely possible if some existing obstacles are overcome. Keep thinking outside the box,that's where the good ideas come from! Hyper Harvest II

I also think there is room to improve capacity in the R series, although that being said I got a good look at the axial machine and it looks ok as well, actually looks fairly simple. Now back to the R series, I have to agree with Dan that there is unused space in the current machine. My thoughts have been that they could increase feeder width and keep the single discharge. I will try to explain my train of thought. First the rotor. If they used the turret style or better yet the direct discharge unload system they could then add 14" (diameter of current unload option) to the length of the rotor and run it under the unloader tube to the edge of the machine. Then if they were to move the clean grain elevator back at the top to the rear corner of grain tank they could add another 12" or so to that end as the rotor drive would be in front of elevator , not beside it. This would add 26" to the length of the rotor, The rotor could also be increased in diameter allowing more seperation area. Now you could double the size of the discharge hole and feed it to an impeller that would somehow direct the flow of material back and towards the center of the machine where it would drop into a chopper or spreader system. Now on to feeding this rotor, my theory is run a cylinder of similar diameter to the current one directly in front of rotor and have it use "reverse bars" and helical type bars or angled concave bars under it to direct the flow of material to the lenghtened drive side of rotor as the new rotor will stick out beyond the feeder on the drive side. To feed this cylinder you would probably still need a second feeder chain although much shorter. The front and second feeder cavity could be widened by at least 8" on the right hand side sitting in the cab without making axel or wheel adjustments by driving both chains from left side. ( the 8" is the width allowed behind sheild on right side for the current drive system) you may even be able to add an inch or two to the other side as well I don't know. Also make sure it has Dan's feeder floor lowering idea installed (it makes so much sense when you see it) You could drive the two cylinders off a common drive and have them set so the main cylinder is always say 10% faster (similar to the lexion) I don't know if accellerator rolls would be a limiting factor or not, could add some length to shoe if needed if final cleaning was an issue. Also not sure if front cylinder should be solid underneath as to move all grain to second cylinder for all seperation or to have a concave idea under it and then find a way to mave grain up to disribution augers. In my opinion this would be a 20% increase in feeder capacity, a 30% plus increase in rotor capacity depending on rotor diameter and a 100% increase in discharge capacity Just my thoughts as to an option anyway may not work at all.

Have given some thought to the capacity increase along the same lines as you Gleanermanitoba but not in the same street as your comphrehensive thinking on it. You probably have a good base in your ideas for a large capacity increase while keeping it in roughly the same parcel size which is no bad act! How did the Versatile towed machine perform and why wasn't it continued with or taken up by another manufacturerIJ What were it's limitationsIJ I have never heard of any being imported into Australia.

I am not an expert on the versatile combine by any means but my understanding is poor timing on release as versatile was struggling financially at around that time, also believe that the pull type era was coming to an end and as stated above the resources to pursue an sp model were not there. I do not think there was a strait cut option for it either therefore limiting it some more. The rumors I heard on it was it was a large combine with some good points but was enginered a little to light and was giving some reliability problems. Then when Ford and new Holland got involved that spelled the end as NH had a machine. In our area as well most versatile dealers were also Allis dealers and the gleaner was there combine of choice.