Combines ROTOR EARS

If ears are rounded over to where the trailing edge is sharp to the touch, you should consider rebuilding or replacing.

tj,I have noticed that the most wear is at the front,and then it gradually decreases to almost none at the back.Please explain if you know why it is not even all the way.You have a lot of experience obviously. Also,I think you said a while back that the sawtooth separator bars had a tendency to hold back bean vines.Please clarify.Just trying to learn something here. PS,is your company working on an auger-style front for the rotor that would retro-fit onto the elephant ear mountingsIJI wish we could have something like that.Thanks.

Yes, I believe Stewart STeel of Weyburn Saskatchewan is working on a retrofit, or may already have one finished.

We see some sets which are worn somewhat at the back, as well as the front. I think the main reason for the disparity in wear on most is that the incoming material is bunched at the front as it comes in, and the vanes spread it out as it travels thru the cone. Also, the vanes are more bunched at the rear, moving the material out of the cone faster. I expect the differences in tip speed as you go from a larger diameter at the front to quite a bit lesser diameter at the rear makes some difference, as well. Sawtooth bars can hook a vine, which will wrap around a tooth and will prevent other material and vines from releasing to the rear transit vanes. When this happens the buildup of trash can be sudden and dramatic. I actually learned this in some tough pinto bean vines. The operator would run for a couple of hours smoothly, then the machine would quit feeding out the discharge. If we caught it quickly enough, no problem, but if not, the rotor slugged very quickly. We actually flattened several vanes this way until we replaced the sawtooth strippers. On the converse, in very dry loose material -- sunflowers, corn shucks and leaves which are breaking up very badly -- the teeth lack coverage to carry this loose stuff up the left side to the vanes, which have a little trouble moving it anyway. When that happens, the trash rolls around in one spot just past the left side of the rear grates. I'm pretty sure this is where most rotor fires are started. The same thing happens on specialty rotors where no sweeper paddles are installed on the rear of the rotor. Augers--I haven't looked the new IH rotor, as yet, except on their patent drawing, but I see how flights could be installed. I question, however, whether the taper on the front of the rotor might not interfere a little with feeding, and whether or not flighting might cause excessive wear on that tapered area. Hope all this makes sense.

tj,thanks for your information.Your observations make a lot of sense.Us farmers usually don't have the time or the patience to analyze what is going on inside . I have heard about the bunching problem at the front of the rotor,but don't really know if it's much of a problem in the corn and soybeans I am used to,or if it's more of a problem in other crops. What is the all-purpose remedy for the separator bars thenIJJohn Deere uses round tines back there.Maybe a round rod or tine welded to the straight bars,and slanted back a little would work. The other brands using auger fronts have a tapered cone. By the way,what is your opinion of the JD rotor designIJOops, I said the "R" word.I should have said single tine separation. Thanks again for your input.

The bunching isn't usually a problem, the ears try to sweep everything which comes out of the feederhouse and carry it up the left side. The material spreads out some about halfway back or thereabouts in the cone, and then is recompressed and squeezed toward the rear, but the load has usually evened out at that point. Stripper bars--We've tried several things here. increasing the width of flat strippers to 2 1_2" helps some. Bolting pieces of tapered flat iron in front of the flat strippers in a spiral pattern which is further apart than the teeth on the sawtooth strippers seems to break up crop mat in milo and beans without causing feed problems. Welding on another mount in front of the existing stripper and installing a reverse bar from a Gleaner P3 processor which has had 1_2 of the teeth removed seems to work best. We get angular deflection off the teeth, along with agitation to help break up matted material. This appears to work on specialty rotors, as well. We've been modifying rotors and installing these bars on the full length of the rotor for about 4 years, and this appears to work very well in all crops operators have used them in. You're correct about the other machines with auger fronts having tapers. The Massey has fairly deep flighting, and there's no problem there. NH tapers are fairly abrupt, however, probably at about the same angle as an IH taper and we see holes worn in them probably about 10% of the time. We've powder hardfaced some of them to prevent this -- sems to be more prevalent on older models -- TR70 and TR85 -- but I think he newer models have heavier metal in that area. JD (not a rotor) rotaries -- Reserving judgement here, but so far not impressed. The tine separators seem to work OK if they don't break off, but thresh, in my opinion isn't the best. It seems that if you set the concaves for best thresh, the (not a rotor) elements require a pretty high (not a rotor) speed to knock out small grains and beans. This tears up stuff quite a bit, and trashes the shoe and also seems to negate the effect of the tines. If you set it so you don't tear stuff into pieces in order to unload the shoe, the tines appear to carry out grain with larger material and you see a (not a rotor)loss. I will say that these machines seem to do very well in corn, though the sample could be a little cleaner. I think quite a bit of thresh is done at the front beater, however. The STS (not a rotor) resembles what we've been doing to White_Massey rotors for several years. However, we use a toothed bar instead of a curved element with a trailing sweeper strip, and what we've done appears to be quite a bit more efficient. Hope all this is clear.

Addendum; Incidentally, I occasionally write articles for magazines (using a pseudonym) and in researching my last article which was about stationary thresher_separators, I found that the "Peerless" separator had a set of tine separators behind a spike tooth threshing cylinder. Although it's conventional threshing, this is very similar to the STS (not a rotor)tine_finger setup. These were apparently fairly efficient -- these machines were able to use a pair of comb and roller combinations instead of sieves.

tj-Could you please pass comment on a problem we are currently experiencing. We grow a tall, very tough type of grass for seed that loves to wrap on shafts of equipment. Our problem is that on both our 2388 and our 9750 this grass will wrap at the front of the rotor on these combines and A) on the 2388 burns out the front rotor bearing and B) on the 9750 wraps the shaft till the buildup pushes the front rotor bearing mount cross-member away from the rotor (forward) forcing off the rotor speed sensor. The 9750 lasts much longer than the 2388 but takes more time to fix. The 2388 rotor bearing will only last sometimes 15 minutes. Might there be a mod to the elephant ears on the 2388 to help this problemIJ Any ideas for the 9750IJ A constant concern is fire as this material burns quite readily. We tried a stripper header thinking this would solve the problem but the grass promptly wrapped and destroyed the center bearing on that unit too! TIA for any responses you might have.

On your 2388, how many washers do you have installed between the front of the rotor and the front bearingIJ Can you remove a washer to tighten up the clearance between the wearplates and the front crossmember without allowing the wearplates to contact in frontIJ On the 2 bolts at the bottom of the wearplates (hexagon heads) it might be possible to install heavy rubber scrapers on the back side of the impeller. These would have to be about 1_2" thick and drilled (slots would be even better) so that they would fit over the existing nuts, and a fairly heavy retainer strip which also would need to be drilled to fit over the nuts would have to be put on over them to hold them in place. You'd set them so they'd rub fairly tightly in front. This might apply to either machine. The scrapers would be near the rotor center, so shouldn't interfere with infeed. Are you seeing a little refeed down the left side of the feederhouse chain as wellIJ This usually is an indication that either the front of the infeed elements are somewhat worn, or that front clearance is too wide. What kind of grass are you cuttingIJ It sounds like the feederhouse chain isn't releasing it quickly enough and is carrying it up to the shaft and possibly carrting some back over. Hope this all makes a little sense.

likely the Marlin ears would help also. From what I hear they almost entirely eliminate any problems with feeding when bunching problems occur.