Combines separation issues

[Rolf]

I see you mentioned 3_4 rasp bars over concave I would put them in sep section as well as rotor sweeps (Were looking at bringing the rotor sweeps back to 5 or so inch pitch, not 7 inch!) place the 1_2 in rasps over concave. Has the R50 got the concave that goes up and around the backIJ as if it does take out every seconded rod there as well, it will look like every thing will dump on the sieves but it doesn't! You could try the sep concave cover kit (Cage martial) As we find that different conditions can make the sep grate work or not works! Do you have channel helicals threw out the cageIJ and do you have the extended channels on discharge end of cageIJ I would do the front feeder mod and use the posifeed rollers (Two) in a crop that you are talking about (OH to have a 5 ton crop again!!) check the speed of your table auger to see now that your ground speed is increasing, the table auger needs to bring it from the ends of the front to the center slightly quicker than your driving! Hope that gives you some ideas to look at. Rolf

 

[wildcat]

I never thought the half-height bars, disruptors or F2 rasps made much of a difference in small grains, I've tried them all. But I do think maybe the guys (NDDan and St. Johns) are on to something with the sweeps.

 

[bob]

Hey Rolf thank you for your comments, it is nice to receive advice from a neighbour. Being from New Zealand we lack the experience of operators like you in Australia and the USA with these machines (one R and two Ns in NZ equals limited experience!!). Moving the 3_4 raps bars is easy, however I am wondering if investing in rotor sweeps (I see Hurtt Equipments quotes US$450 = NZ$740 + freight for a set) will provide a noticeable reduction in rotor loss and a return on my investment. I guess they could be made here with some instructions if someone could provide these. I also assume that later R machines than ours, are fitted with cage material at the bottom of the separate rather than the cross bars and wires like the concave. Is the fitted cage material more aggressive at separating cereal grain from strawIJ Every second wire is removed from lower and upper concave with channel helicals fitted throughout and extended into the discharge area. This web site is great but often there are too many options and it is not often said what is being harvested. It is also interesting to see your earlier post about Contractor headers (combines) breaking down. There have been a number of Class lexion machines sold around us in recent times and they often experience problems within the first few hours.Germany is a long way away to get parts. I love the Gleaner because generally it is reliable and can be fixed by anyone. We had 1_2 meter of snow here last week and it is snowing again today. Being the shortest day there is a lot of winter left brrrrr. regards

 

[R_O_M]

Hi Bob! you guys are sure on your lonesome over there. And 9 to 10 tonnes a Ha. Please don't torture us so! After nearly 10 years of drought and semi drought in this area we are at a pretty low ebb. Good to know about the neighbours though. If you haven't done so already, try googling "Hurtt Equipment". Dan has generously provided a very large amount of info on the mods needed to boost the performance of the Gleaners, including the rotor sweeps. We made our own from details that Dan sent us. They are not hard to make once you have done the first set. As Rolf has said, we will try cutting the angle of the sweeps this next season [ if this bloody drought ever ends! About 65 mms of rain this year so far and we are amongst the high readings in all of western Victoria ] to allow the crop a little more time in the separator section. If your harvesting conditions are damp then the sweeps will give you a big boost in capacity. From work that JR has done over in eastern Victoria with two sets of sweeps installed, and quite high losses as a result, it looks as though we can definitely feed material through the separator too fast for the grain to get sorted out. Our own rotor losses dropped dramatically with the one set of sweeps but we figure we can do better with a reduced angle on the sweeps and a little more time in the separator section. Will catch you again! Cheers.

 

[NDDan]

It would be nice to know what actual percentage of yeild you are losing. Doesn't really matter if you want it better though. First I'll tell you a little story about seperator grates. Jobber company makes seperator grate kits to weld into P1 machines. P1's had cage material. P1's are used in N5, N6, N7,R5, R6, R7, and R60-70 prior to 1990. These separator grates worked fine on custum wheat run until they got up north. When they got up north the rotor loss went out of control. Seperator grates had to be removed and cage material reinstalled. Now we are talking about old P1's and they had very large gap from cross bar to cross bar on these jobber grates (like 6" I believe) plus the cylinder bars are much less aggresive as compared to P3 bars. Now with that in mind I had a R72 that the guy was losing more barley than he wanted. We had installed up to 8 reverse bars with no noticable improvement. We then installed the seperator grate cover kit from Australia and it cured the problem. Seperator grate must of been rolling the straw which traped the seeds. We had then installed lots of seperator grate cover kits. These cover kits are made of cage style material. I had loewen manufaturing make covers to fit all the various machines. I had them make them with countersunk hardware and chromed. Now after alot of years I started just welding wires onto every other wire to bring wire closer to level with top of cross bars. Gleaner has high wide wire grates these days and we order all our machines that way. loewen has replacement sections to switch out the seperator grate completely so cage material section can be installed. I don't find in our part of the world and our crops that we need seperator grate especially with such low wires. I don't leave bars off or install gussets in our area and I believe that and half height bars are good mainly for corn areas. With that said I do not think the missing bars or gussets are hurting you. My choice for seperator side on the rotor is the sweeps. They will not only help keep the tough straw flowing but they will also help prevent breaking up the brittle straw. I always like to break up the straw as little as possible for best separation. I've never used F2 concave rasp bars but I have used old flat cylinder bars like out of an old 503 IH. I rarely have enough loss to monkey with this but I have fastened them bars to seperator grate area and I have cut them to fit inbetween the helicals on the removable door. These old flat rasp bars do not seem to take any power plus they don't seem to break up the straw. As far as reverse bars we never us them anymore. If you were to install any I would only install one in any one spinning location. You can install reverse bars anytime quickly even if you have installed some home made sweeps. I told Rolf to just copy picture of sweeps as he wishes because it cost JR a bundle to have them shipped to Australia. Your R50 is an early one and it takes a unique sweep as compared to later machines. I don't know what pitch my sweeps are. I tried to keep distance between sweeper irons wide enough for corn cobs and still sweep the total width of removed cylinder bars. The backside of helicals help prevent material from moving over any faster than the pitch of helical. Sweep iron runs at same diameter as the cylinder bars. A guy may be able to reduce pitch of sweep irons as Rolf suggests but I'll let him check that out. I hope you find something hear usefull.

 

[NDDan]

I don't ever push two sets of sweeps for one set makes the big difference. I do have a few machines around running with two sets of sweeps and no problems. JR does have a couple old P1 system tricks in his machine like shimmed out steep pitch helicals on thresher side with shim protruding out pressure side. Plus a couple other things. I think he has a great plan in place for this season and that may include a Bison rotor. I don't know if you heard but JRs machine went to dealer so he could go demo in some rice. I guess it was very very impresive.

 

[Rolf]

I remember back in 94 soon after we got the R62 and how it rumbled and carried on, in a bit of slightly green wheat!! Back then you had to be 200km's away from a rice paddock as the poor old dear would go into shock if you mention about taking it near a rice paddy! Just amazing how by doing some simple upgrades we now have guys taking their Rotary GlEANERS into a rice crop surely that has to say something to the designers about the Gurus on this site getting there machines to do something that NO owner would ever consider before upgrades!! Good work NDDan,TBran, JR and others Rolf

 

[R_O_M]

Dan, I have just been looking at the photo of the Bison rotor on your site. It has 3 full turns of an auger to move the material through the seperator section. The rotor sweeps, on the other hand, have one blade sweeping the width of the each gap between spiders. There are 4 gaps between the bar mounting spiders out to the discharge paddle section. There are eight bars. Effectively, with the current sweep angle, the sweeps are only doing the equivalent of half a turn of the rotor to completely sweep the seperation section. This is compared to 3 turns on the Bison to do the same job. The above is just an observation. If the Bison is so effective in seperation, it may pay to play with the angle of the sweeps and a couple of other ideas which Rolf and I intend to do. If the reduced sweep angle can then match the Bison you would really have a poor man's Bison and something that is very cheap to get a big boost in performance. The current sweep set-up already does this but maybe it can still be improved on quite a bit. We spaced out all of the bars full length of our rotor last season with 12 mm [ 1_2" ] spacers. The 12mm spacers were too much as we ground up our straw more than we would have liked. It did not seem to affect the HP requirements. We will be going back to 6 or 8mm spacers full length under all bars this next season. Cheers.

 

[NDDan]

I see what your saying on the turns of flighting. Going by the wear of paint on flighting the straw crops rarely touch the flighting. Corn cobs can and do wipe the paint off. The twisted pins in conjunction with the helicals are what moves the crop. I believe the extra room for loser mat of material is part of the secret. This is kind of oppisite the way you are tring to do it by pressing crop out of straw with shimmed out cylinder bars. My sweeps don't really increase the gap but they work at keeping things flowing which prevents most any degree of clumping. Picture of rotor with sweeps on our website have two sets of sweeps so you are right that each 180 degree turn of rotor would sweep inside of cage. With one set it would be 360 degree turn of rotor. I think you are exactly right about less pitch on sweeps especially with the higher RPM crops. I think the main trick with sweeps are that they are long enough to keep the sweeping action. Thanks for all your productive debate on making the meanest Gleaner yet. Oh yea the Bisons on our site are just proto n1 and n2. We'll get production one on there someday.

 

[R_O_M]

Which sort of raises the question; Should a standard rotor be stripped clean of bars in the seperator and a twisted pins only set-up be tried in the cereal cropsIJ