Combines Rotor loss in Barley

you might try running the sep grate tight also you might want to consider filler bars on the concave this will let you slow the cylinder down to around 850. the greener your straw the tighter your grate needs to be . I just did some 120 bushel barley and had the grate set at 2 . hope this helps

G'Day Magnum

Have you counted and calculated what you are actually losing and what percent of yeild it isIJ Why do you have the very front tighter than the backIJ I would move front back to MID or one knotch toward MIN and if you are having a tough time knocking it out then install two or three rows of filler bars. Are you using up your power or do you have room to speed up some. Try increasing cylinder clearance for you may be grinding it up to much. The more you grind it up the harder it is to spin seeds out of the straw. I had a guy with R72 that was having more barley loss than he wanted and he had up to eight reverse bars in which used up all his power. loss never changed from having just two reverse bars in. We installed seperator grate cover and then he was happy. Now he goes like crazy and has no reverse bars at all. If straw doesn't convey easy enough the seperator grate can roll it and trap some seeds which goes out end of rotor. If you insist on reverse bars I would not install any more than one spinning in any one location. Hope I gave you a couple of ideas you can use.

G'Day Dan and Co QuestionIJ

Front of Concave is set to 1_8 inch when concave is set at zero at rear. I am not having trouble threshing. Barley is real is easy to thresh. (malt barley) I thought a hire wire sep. grate would help loss like you said. (less rolling of material) It seems like my old combine with a low wire sep grate and concave did a better job. loss is in the 3 percent range. I want to have to scratch hard to find loss. 3 percent is 3 - 4 bushel a acre in 120 bushel barley. Is 1 percent loss to much to ask forIJ Horsepower use went up when we closed up sep. grate. I expect to run machine at max. power and not have much loss. Is your sep. grate cover much better than a high wire sep. grateIJ I could understand if you were covering up a low wire sep. grate.

A high wire concave has the same size wires as a low wire concave. On a high wire concave or sep. grate the wires are farther apart and closer to the top of the bars. The high wire setup is supposed to reduce plugging with cobs or green material. I thought the high wire setup would reduce loss by having more open area. My two cents correct or not.

1_8" at front of concave when rear is at zero would be for very hard threshing conditions. To me you made it sound like you had front at 1_8" and rear at 5 to 6 which is in the 3_8" range. I'm not sure if there is a condition where I would ever want front tighter than back. I severly doubt you are having any more loss with high wire seperator grate than you would of been having with low wire grate in the same given field. How many seeds did you find in a sqaure foot or two square feet behind your discharge shute. No, one percent loss shouldn't be to much to ask for. I can see where a high wide wire seperator grate will help prevent breaking corn cobs or plugging with cobs but am unsure how much difference it would make in rolling straw that was somewhat resistant to slide. I can not tell you the difference in performance between a high wire seperator grate and seperator grate cover for I have not even seen a high wire grate yet. The seperator grate cover that I installed in the first machines was the Gleaner grate cover kit and when it wouldn't fit the later adjustable grates I got together with loewen to have them build one for me that would fit and was chromed and had countersunk mounting hardware. I don't install the grate cover in all machines but suggest it if in crops that are hard to convey at the RPM they need to run. I don't want to waist any of your time tring this or that on my account so in my last post I gave you some of my experience with which you can do whatever you want with. I'm so dog tired from the pre-harvest rush that I can't hardly think so I must go but I would try the thresh less approach for your barley. let us know how you get along and maybe someone else could give you a pointer or two.

I found as well that I had to run my rotor at about 800 to 900 and the concave at about 4 to get min. loss. This was with completly worn out rub bars, 4 filler bars, and no mods however, and still cranked out a good 700-900 bu._hr with a lot less loss than my buddy's 9600 at a much lower rate. Should have no trouble doubling the green machine after some mods. I think the idea is to spread the material out as it goes over the cage not bunch it up like the extra deep helicals and discharge paddles are likely to do.