We have tried large and small wire concaves in our 9870's and every sieve, chaffer,setting concave clearance rotor speed combination we can think of. 85 bu winter wheat trying to keep our losses to 1% or less. Sample looks acceptable but capacity is not. 750 bu. / hr is all we can squeeze out of them right now. We were expecting more like 1000 - 1200 bu / hr in easy threshing standing winter wheat. I see some of you rate a combine in acres / day this type of rating means nothing to me. It's all about productivity / hr. At this point the 9870 sts is not turning our world upside down. I would invite anyone with any suggestions to please help me. We are long long time Deere customers but we are starting to look over the fence from a combine standpoint. Very disappointed
Our feeling is that this rifled bullet threshing system may be pushing the material through too fast to allow the grain to fall to the shoe.
Re: capacity issues with 9870's in wheat and barle
We just finished combining our winter wheat 2 weeks ago, 75bus/acre 9870s with 40ft heads and we were at almost 900bus/hour with what we thought were acceptable losses. We ran ours with small wire concaves with no filler plates. We couldn't get anymore capacity because the combines ran out of power in heavy straw. We feel they are a huge improvement over the 60 series and good deal more capacity. They are still not comparable to the so called class 9 machines but we got exactly what we were expecting.
Re: capacity issues with 9870's in wheat and barle
How much straw are you taking in? Since that would have more to do with your bu/hr. productivity. Have you done a power shut down on it yet to see what is really going on?
Re: capacity issues with 9870's in wheat and barle
In Ontario, we have been using the round bar concave with interupter inserts for a few years now with excellent results. Threshing is not a problem, even in some hard red we did this year. I believe the concave REALLY helps get the grain out quicker and rotor loss does not seem to be a problem in 100bu+ wheat. Getting over 1200/hr is no problem in this type of crop using that set-up.
That is 1200bu/hr delivered to the elevator, not monitor either. I was also delivering the cleanest sample all season, there were alot of red combines going to that elevator as well. Losses were in the 1/2% range.
Re: capacity issues with 9870's in wheat and barle
Thanks for that suggestion, I thought of that concave as well. Have you had to use filler strips in that concave for wheat? And have you used that concave with any success in canola. We are using a large wire concave in canola today and doing a decent job in a 60 bu canola crop at around 850-900 bu/ hour 30 ft. Swath.
Re: capacity issues with 9870's in wheat and barle
Are interupter bars available from Deere? Or are they a homemade deal. I was having rotor loss issues in our wheat earlier this year, it was running about 130 Bu/a sieve loss was nill but I couldn't stop the rotor loss. I was running all small wire with every third wire pulled on the last concave. I do have a set of round bars that I'll be using for high moisture corn at the end of September.
Re: capacity issues with 9870's in wheat and barle
Hmm, 750/hr. Would consider jumping off a bridge if thats all I could get out of them. I averaged between 800 to 1200 all last season with 9860. Would freak if I had over 1% loss. You've dropped the choppers I assume, and checked that its thrashing it out of the heads. Rotor has to be almost flat out to get capacity. Only back away from rotor speed if your getting excessive shoe loss or cracks. Oh, and this is just my opinion of course, but any concave other than small wire in AB wheat will give poor results.
Re: capacity issues with 9870's in wheat and barle
I have used round bar concaves with interrupt bars in wheat on my harvest tours for 2 years, and personally found it was plenty aggressive and never had any rotor loss, with it.
Re: capacity issues with 9870's in wheat and barle
Yes we are looking for a bridge as we speak. But seriously we have not been able to make small wire work any where. We have now ordered smooth threshing elements this is Deere,s suggestion here. I am beggining to wonder if no one has put these units under the microscope like we have. We are dropping the straw and using a 4'long x 1'wide screen to throw under the combine, this way we get close to the entire width of the machine. At this point we carefully sort off the MOG. We have determined the weight of 100 seeds on a gram scale. We then weigh the grain on our catch screen, divide by 4, this gives us our weight / square foot. We then convert that to a seed count. We have a solid calibration on our mass flow sensor due to the fact that our grain cart has a scale on it that reads within 1% of our legal for trade truck scale in our yard. So we know our yield monitors are very close. Because we calibrate them in every field. So eliminating all the variables in yield we document the yield at the same point in time that our screen is thrown this gives us the percentage of loss based on the yield / acre. If any one has gone to these lengths of checking their combines and can with a clear conscience tell me that they can get 1200 bu. / hour of wheat or 1700 or 1800 / hour of barley with any combination of equipment speeds and or clearances in a 9870 Deere combine in an average 14 hour day all day long I want to hear from you and I will pay all your costs to get here tomorrow. We and our dealer cannot get this done.
Re: capacity issues with 9870's in wheat and barle
Yes we are looking for a bridge as we speak. But seriously we have not been able to make small wire work any where. We have now ordered smooth threshing elements this is Deere,s suggestion here. I am beggining to wonder if no one has put these units under the microscope like we have. We are dropping the straw and using a 4'long x 1'wide screen to throw under the combine, this way we get close to the entire width of the machine. At this point we carefully sort off the MOG. We have determined the weight of 100 seeds on a gram scale. We then weigh the grain on our catch screen, divide by 4, this gives us our weight / square foot. We then convert that to a seed count. We have a solid calibration on our mass flow sensor due to the fact that our grain cart has a scale on it that reads within 1% of our legal for trade truck scale in our yard. So we know our yield monitors are very close. Because we calibrate them in every field. So eliminating all the variables in yield we document the yield at the same point in time that our screen is thrown this gives us the percentage of loss based on the yield / acre. If any one has gone to these lengths of checking their combines and can with a clear conscience tell me that they can get 1200 bu. / hour of wheat or 1700 or 1800 / hour of barley with any combination of equipment speeds and or clearances in a 9870 Deere combine in an average 14 hour day all day long I want to hear from you and I will pay all your costs to get here tomorrow. We and our dealer cannot get this done.
Re: capacity issues with 9870's in wheat and barle
Southcentralab,
Excellent detail on testing for loss. I hope your dealer didn't feed you the line that you would average 1200 and 1700 for the season. Could shorten a beautiful relationship. Never the less 750/hr in wheat does sound on the low side. Is this a power issue or slowing down to prevent rotor loss? My 2005 does not have bullet rotor, so can't speak to that. The issue I had with pulling wires (in wheat), was forcing it out too fast, not getting threshed. Barley not as much of an issue.
P.S. Don't look for a bridge just yet, the seasons just beginning!
All the best!
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