[rod]

Those of you running the '40 series machines this harvest, is there any difference in the concaves (small wire for cereals) compared to previous versions?
Anyone tried to A&I (Loewen) helical concaves in '20 '30 ' 40 series?
Any improvements in other areas of these machines compared to previous models?

 

[bison]

Those of you running the '40 series machines this harvest, is there any difference in the concaves (small wire for cereals) compared to previous versions?
Anyone tried to A&I (Loewen) helical concaves in '20 '30 ' 40 series?
Any improvements in other areas of these machines compared to previous models?

I have had helicals on a 7120 for a few years Rod, they've work well for me in wheat, barley, peas. But I'm across the ditch so probably not a good comparison. I have still had to use cover plates under the first module on hard threshing wheat though to clean the white caps up and reduce returns loading. I think they have been good for me in the heavy, tough, greenish barley we can get here so maybe that's an indicator for you in your rice?


Are you changing away from the CR's? Thought they had been good to you..... apart from the ad blue!#$%?

 

[rod]

I have had helicals on a 7120 for a few years Rod, they've work well for me in wheat, barley, peas. But I'm across the ditch so probably not a good comparison. I have still had to use cover plates under the first module on hard threshing wheat though to clean the white caps up and reduce returns loading. I think they have been good for me in the heavy, tough, greenish barley we can get here so maybe that's an indicator for you in your rice?


Are you changing away from the CR's? Thought they had been good to you..... apart from the ad blue!#$%?

Yeah, won't be using helical small grain concaves in rice - no matter what colour machine. Most use would be in cereals. From my understanding in talking to many who own "flagship" Case machines, overloading the returns is a big problem in tougher threshing conditions, often as a result of poor thrashing.
Seems to me to be the same problem STS endured until changing the concaves.
CR "twin pitch" is a great machine. All machine colours have their "issues" Looking at options at this stage.

 

[Captain Crisp]

Putting in interupter bars which I think still aren't listed for the flag ship (ie order to fit 2388) made a massive difference in my 8010 in sunlin wheat in threshing only on first concave module fitting first row of interuptor bars skipping every second bar ( fit one miss a spot ect) then alternately on the second row of interuptor bars can't remember how many at a gues about 40 or 50 but simple to Horkheimer out if you have a small wire concave out of the machine

 

[bison]

Yeah, won't be using helical small grain concaves in rice - no matter what colour machine. Most use would be in cereals. From my understanding in talking to many who own "flagship" Case machines, overloading the returns is a big problem in tougher threshing conditions, often as a result of poor thrashing.
Seems to me to be the same problem STS endured until changing the concaves.
CR "twin pitch" is a great machine. All machine colours have their "issues" Looking at options at this stage.

I cant help but think those operators who mention this overloading returns thing on the 'flagship' series haven't got their machines set up properly. High returns is usually either due to incomplete threshing or bottom sieves being too tight, or both. Can those people please tell me what the difference is compared to the 80's and 88's series of axial flow in the rotor area...... the concaves have more wrap.... so how does that make threshing worse.


Sure I realize some of you guys in the dry regions have some real tough threshing, baked in the head wheat, nevertheless the 20,30,40 series machines are not worse than the traditional style, just a little different..... and don't tell me it is the NH levelling sieves.... total BS.

 

[SWFarmService]

The diff in the rotor is about 10" in length but should have little to no effect on thrashing, maybe a little down fall in seperation.

The prob with the return overload is that the whole cleaning system was likely set up with corn in mind. The cleaning system on these machines is a failure. This is my opinion, reasons why is the fan is too small, bottom sieve covers way too much air flow and they should have put together a better rethrasher system on, even if it was like the NH with 2 I think it would be a major improvement. Also I think the wide feeder caused some flow issues causing more ground up straw causing more garbage over the cleaning system. All of these things combined make these things a night mare.

These are my opinions so take them how you want to. I have experience with these machines and I don't get too excited about them.

 

[rod]

.....
The prob with the return overload is that the whole cleaning system was likely set up with corn in mind. .... This is my opinion, reasons why is the fan is too small, bottom sieve covers way too much air flow and they should have put together a better rethrasher system on, even if it was like the NH with 2 I think it would be a major improvement. Also I think the wide feeder caused some flow issues causing more ground up straw causing more garbage over the cleaning system. All of these things combined make these things a night mare.

These are my opinions so take them how you want to. I have experience with these machines and I don't get too excited about them.

IMO, the returns system overloading - no matter what coloured toy - is the result of poor thrashing & too a lesser extent, bottom sieve too tight. In my experience with NH, having the pre-cleaner too open can cause you a heap of grief as well, couldn't see why that wouldn't cause grief in a flagship machine as well. We're talking about cereals & canola here & not corn.
Many moons ago, CASE where doing trial & evaluation work with the now known but then unreleased 8010's in rice in this area. For the first couple of years they where having transition problems ie. feeding the rotor properly from the end of the feeder chain to the transition cone. All this work was done in rice as it is a crop that will "test you out". It took many mods to get it to work & plenty of work afterwards in other testing grounds.
I'm not sure if this wider feeder house feeding the same width rotor has anything to do the problems further along. If anyone feels this to be a problem, why not simply make the feed from the draper narrower into the feeder house by using feed plates?
I would think a contributing factor with poor thrashing & overloading sieves is in part due to the corn by default manufacturing of the rotor cage - with all those holes in the cage. I can see why that's applicable for corn but would cause grief in dry cereals. I know that you have at least block off two sections of those holes too have any chance of machine capability in cereals - especially in our hot, dry brittle conditions.

 

[SWFarmService]

I think the block off plates have recently been changed to how I set them up in my specialty 1480 or at least this is what I was told, they no longer put them on the front concave working back but they put them on the right side putting them toward the center, I have 7-8 segments blocked on my 1480 but I am not sure how far I would go with the flagship. Another thing that I have wondered about was the orientation of the cage and concave shape compared to the old design.

I really wonder what else is different between red and yella with the cleaning system, the red one looses air flow as you try to close the bottom sieve causing the top to overload. It can be very complicated to fine tune these machines, generally end up heading in the wrong direction. It seems there is not nearly enough air flow to make this goofy acting system to work that the returns just go through an endless merry go round never being sent to the right place.

 

[torriem]

IMO, the returns system overloading - no matter what coloured toy - is the result of poor thrashing & too a lesser extent, bottom sieve too tight. In my experience with NH, having the pre-cleaner too open can cause you a heap of grief as well, couldn't see why that wouldn't cause grief in a flagship machine as well. We're talking about cereals & canola here & not corn.

Yes I think you're right there. On our 7120 and 7230 we run with the bottom sieve no tighter than the top sieve. In fact most of the time in wheat (I've said this many times on the forum) we run with the bottom sieve wider (say 10-15) and the top sieve closed down (6-10). On most crops if you have tailings load on the case flagship machines, it means you've basically got losses anyway. Because grain that ends up in the rethresher is just going to get cycled back through the sieves until it falls through or blows out the back. The only way to fix the problem is to fix your threshing and then close the top sieve down to clean more grain on the first pass. I think on older machines that put returns back into the rotor or cylinder, it hid the problem of poor threshing. Perhaps the rotor did a better job on the second pass on your tailings, or just as likely they went out the back as rotor loss and you never ever knew it.

Some day it would be nice to have a machine that was made for small grains instead of corn. I guess that's what Gleaners are supposed to be.

 

[SWFarmService]

The reason your so far open with the bottom is because it blocks off the air from the top if you close it up. Essentially you are cleaning with only the top sieve. So here is where the problem goes from bad to worse is it takes an incredible amount of air to overcome this and chaff and grain falls through the mid to rear section of the sieve because there is not enough air to suspend the chaff, and if you ever noticed the location of the return sump auger and the rear of the bottom sieve you will notice when they built these machines they just used the components required to do the job, there was not a single guy in the engineeringroom that had a clue about how a cleaning system works.

Other colors usually fall short on air making them too long worried about grain saving propaganda but the flagship missed the whole picture.

Gleaner has the cleaning system that works, it has air, width and technique all in one.

 

[hondaman]

Yes I think you're right there. On our 7120 and 7230 we run with the bottom sieve no tighter than the top sieve. In fact most of the time in wheat (I've said this many times on the forum) we run with the bottom sieve wider (say 10-15) and the top sieve closed down (6-10).

Torriem, what do you think would happen if you pulled the bottom sieve right out of there, since you are basically cleaning with the chaffer anyway. I vote for you to try it and let us know the results. Or maybe it needs to be there to counter act the top sieve.

 

[torriem]

I'm sure it would work fine in wheat to completely remove the bottom seive. Not sure about any other crops! One thing I can think of is that it mechanically balances the chaffer (they move opposite to each other). So without the bottom sieve I am sure it would shake the combine pretty badly.

The actual official recommendation from Case as given by their combine rep, for western Canada, is to reverse the standard top and bottom sieve settings.

I agree about Gleaner's cleaning system engineering. They definitely put a lot of thought into it, and from what I can see it works very well.

Still for all its faults, it's pretty amazing you can harvest heavy wheat crops at a fairly good speed with the flagship combines and have only 2% loss (comparable to a lot of other brands I might add).

Every harvest I wonder if there's a better way to clean grain in the combine, particularly light crops like Canola.

 

[rod]

From what I know the NH & Case are exactly the same cleaning system apart from the fan. I don't know if they operate at the same speed but for all intent & purpose, they are the same.
So the question is: why does the NH work & the Case has problems ? - so I'm led to believe. Plenty of people have said to me: "that NH fan is stone age technology - why didn't they use the Case fan?" Yeah, good question. But the NH fan works. I've never run out of air in the CR. I would have thought the chevron design of the Case fan would be better on the wide frame cleaning system but I've been told: "it's crap". So, I don't know. Leads me to thinking the fan has not a lot to do with the "problems" a Case flagship has in overloading the cleaning system & high returns.
More to do with complete machine setup in crop conditions & or, poor thrashing capability either from poor concaves or incorrect position of the concaves i.e thrashing radius. Of course, some varieties & crop conditions are really tough to thrash out in the best of conditions .... no doubt this will cause all colours grief.

 

[SWFarmService]

One thing about it is that they can thrash corn, I think they should make a combine to do well in things such as rice, milo and flax should be go to test crops, if they can handle them crops well and then climb the hills in Washington or Oregon and they would have a combine that would excel in all crops

 

[cihmech]

You can remove the bottom screens. Case had a bulletin avout removing if it plugs do to freezing. They recommend attaching weight the the frame that is equal to the removed screens as to not throw off the balance of the shaker system.

 

[torriem]

I think the reason you hear of more problems with Case machines plugging their fans or otherwise having cleaning issues is two-fold. I honestly think the twin rotor does a better separating job. but also the NH rethresher design looks to me like it actually does rethreshing in small grains, much more than Case's design does. I am not sure what crops the Case rethresher actually works in. I haven't yet encountered a crop that it does anything to. Even on Canola. Modern varieties have such harder pods these days that the rethresher probably just spits them out.

This all reminds me that even though we've had combine harvesters for may years, and we have a pretty good idea how to set them most of the time, the honest fact is that even the engineers are just guessing. Is threshing and separating best done be grinding, moving it fast or moving it slow, centripedal force? They can try to put cameras inside the combine and see what's happening, do kill stalls, but the fact is it's really hard to figure out what things improve separation. As can be seen from the aftermarket shops there are lots of theories on how to make it work better. Cover plates, spiral concaves, interrupter bars, etc.

 

[SWFarmService]

I agree with you totally torriem, what's interesting is there is a 100+ ways to thrash grain, it is just hard to find a balance between capacity and efficiency.

Here is my point.
A cylinder/walker machine is very efficient but can be tricky to keep grain loss down.

A axial flow can go all ways, and contrary to belief there is many people thinking increasing rotor diameter with horse power would be a good thing they might find that the leverage on the larger size would become a huge prob in tough conditions. Making them shorter would maybe help if rotor diameter larger but then we are headed to finding a new way to get the straw to the rear of the machine.

A transverse system has an advantage on inlet flow but combine width will eventually become a problem.

All we can do is try to find the best ways we can to make what we got work the best we can make them in our conditions. I wish guys would talk a little louder to the manufacturers about making a new generation of harvesters and not just what they want in the cab. The only one that has made a serious change in how there harvesters were biult in recent history was Deere joining the club in axial rotaries, I wish they would have done something more to make a step forward since they were investing the money anyways.

I'm maybe off my rocker but we I think it's time to move forward.

 

[cihmech]

You mean that the satellite radio, the refrigerator under instructor seat , leather wrap steering wheel and seat isnt a trade off for grain loss? Operator seat with a controller and a accumulator attached to it. Its a tractor or harvester for Crist sake. Please speak up and often. They say farmers want all this crap. Lets have equipment that works then lasts. If there is room in the budget maybe some creature comforts.

 

[torriem]

Well it is true that all other things being equal, creature comforts do count. But you're right. And one of the reason we stick with Case, particularly the flagship machines, is that they are very simple and have few moving parts compared to Deere, NH, etc. Though it looks like the latest Massey's are pretty simple also.

You are right, though. We should speak up more. I have mentioned things at combine clinics and the combine reps do listen but I still don't feel like what I say translates in any way to the engineers. Hard to argue with the money CNH makes from corn I guess. I think also we farmers get a reputation with the engineers as picky people who want all three of fast, efficient, cheap. So I dunno. At the way prices are skyrocketing ($700k for a big quad tractor?!) I am not sure I can afford any new Case innovation anyway!

Talking with my brother we do have ideas we'd love to prototype some day both for threshing and cleaning. That takes a lot of money and time though.

I think the last real experimentation in threshing technology was the bi-rotor machine that spun the threshing grate as well as the rotor (in the same direction). From what I've read it performed pretty well in crops like wheat. Of course John Deere finally bought up the patents and buried the whole concept. I suspect part of the reason was that it didn't work well in corn.