[dpilot83]

I have heard one should be able to find only 1 or 2 kernels of wheat per square foot behind the combine. I have never been able to get my machine (2012 S67 with a Shelbourne XCV 36 stripper header) set anywhere close to that.

It seems like I have a fair amount of shoe loss when I try to push the bushels per hour. I have heard of other Gleaner owners running around 1700 bushels per hour with a similar setup and I've heard of JD S670 owners running at around 2000 bushels per hour with the same head.

Finally instead of spending so much time checking behind my combine, I decided to start checking other peoples fields. I am not seeing anyone with 1 to 2 kernels of wheat in a square foot. I am wondering if when that kind of thing is said, people are checking an area much smaller than 1 square foot?

We drilled on 10" centers so I check between the rows for 14 or 15 inches. When you thoroughly do that, you sure aren't doing it in a single breath as you try to blow the chaff away. I also notice that if I blow hard enough to blow the chaff away I also blow seeds around and they often want to blow downhill towards the rows themselves where it is harder to find them.

For me it's very rare to see less than 10 behind the combine.

For what it's worth, I have the factory rotor with new bars in the concave area. The concaves are in excellent condition as are the helical bars.

I have four factory AGCO cover plates on and I have three extra covers made by my dealer and held on with j-hooks so I would say with the factory covers I have something like 2 or 3 bars covered all the way across the bottom of the concaves and with the dealer covers I have another 3 bars covered on the right three concaves.

I have leveled my concaves with a 1/8" hex wrench as a gauge and I have also calibrated the concaves, fan choke, and chaffer/sieve, but the Lang combine specialist says I leveled the concave 1 bar down from where I was supposed to do it so they are probably running tighter than 1/8 of an inch when I have the concaves set at 0.

I am running the concave at 0 sometimes but I occasionally pull it back to 0.02 or something like that to see if there is a difference in the sample. I have run the rotor RPM between probably 500 and 800

I am running the fan wide open. I have I am running the chaffer most of the way open (22 or so on the EIP) or I start to run some out the back. I am running the sieve at about 8 or I'm getting unthreshed heads in the sample.

I can't seem to get more than 1000 to 1200 bushels per hour out of the machine without getting pretty significant losses.

I did a kill stop (only once) and when I checked the chaffer there was a significantly heavier load on the left side of the chaffer than the right. I was really surprised at how much material was piled up until about halfway back on the chaffer but then I've never looked in a combine before after a kill stop.

I have neighbors with competitive machines (JD S670) running faster than me with the same header (around 2000 bushels per hour) and they're feeling comfortable with their losses.

I'm just trying to figure out what I should be doing and what I should be able to expect in wheat for combine loss (after header loss is subtracted out because there definitely is header loss with a Shelbourne)

Any thoughts would be very much appreciated. Thanks.

 

[dpilot83]

I forgot to mention, when I ran another cover plate on the left concave we were getting excessive rotor loss. Same thing with when we were running the rotor at higher speeds.

 

[712alberta]

It works best to have something you can throw or drop under your combine as you go over it, that way your only looking at what comes out of the machine, and not what is lost at the header. Started using a cookie sheet, make sure it's not your wife, girlfriend, mother, grandmother or sisters good one, and from there you can work the math back to loss per foot, meter, acre, or hectare. If your tossing it under the machine, it does take 2 people, thats the issue if there is only one of you.

 

[dpilot83]

Thanks. Problem with that is again the stripper header. Lang combine specialist brought a screen out and it was nearly impossible to use because it would lean about 45 degrees one way or another due to the way it would fall in the stripped wheat.

 

[Snipe]

Are you having combine loss or head loss? I find the Shellbourne always loses more than combine. With a stripper if I am having losses I will slow down rotor speed and it seems to help but I see your running it slow already. have you tried cover plates on concaves so you can run sieve open more? I think I have the bottom 6 covered.

 

[dpilot83]

It seems my head loss is about equal to the combine loss.

I think I have maybe 5 or 6 kernels per square foot on the head and then maybe 15 or so behind the chaffer (which means maybe 9 or 10 of that is from the machine) and maybe 9 or so outside the chaffer (so 3 or 4 from the machine). If a guy were to average it across the width of the header it would probably be close to the same loss from the combine and head.

I think the rotor speed I referenced in my original post was combine rotor speed. I run the rotor on the head as slow as I can while still not leaving any grain in the heads. I like to see the grain gone from the heads while some of the head is still left on the plant. Header rotor speed is probably the thing we adjust the most throughout the day and is the adjustment I am most comfortable with.

I have around 6 bars covered on the right three concave sections and 2 or 3 bars covered on the left concave. Seemed like we were getting more rotor loss than we wanted with 6 bars covered on the left concave.

 

[qmark]

Just for referance, when testing combines pami always listed capacity at 2% loss which I assumed they found acceptable.

 

[Highmarker]

I have used a short Rubbermaid that is about 2' square' opening to throw down in front of the combine. You have to run the head a little higher cause is about 8" tall but it catches everything.

I'm Pretty happy if it's running 1% or less losses but if it's hard to set to get there I don't spend too much time messing with things if it's around 1.5%.

I get an idea what 1% looks like a when you put a shovel behind the sieves and catch everything for a second or two and then use that to set the other combines that way you can check multiple times a day with the shovel and not stop the combines. Carrying the catch tray and scale around is a pain so that's why I like to use the shovel. Usually if there is only a few kernels of wheat in the shovel or less than a table spoon of canola I concider that a pretty good job. That works out to about 0.5-1% approximately. Not very scientific but we do not have much volunteer weeds to deal with. And we run slower ground speed than most people from what I can tell.

 

[rod]

You're not alone trying to evaluate in a quick & easy way, combine/head loss, & what is acceptable to you - in your field conditions.
Have a look at HarvestCalc How to use & ask yourself if this could help you arrive at an informed decision.
I got the HarvestCalc app developed because of the exact same reasoning you're trying to find answers too. I'm a custom cutter, so I need to show my customers - & myself - the actual losses & to be able to maximise the efficiency of my machine whilst accounting for the losses.
It's easy to use & provides you with the real facts of your machine, in the crop/field conditions you're testing.

 

[cobra1970]

Here's a chart to help you.

 

[Don Boles]

Just for referance, when testing combines pami always listed capacity at 2% loss which I assumed they found acceptable.

Not to nitpick but...
http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/deptdocs.nsf/all/eng7932/$FILE/691.pdf
Since this is a Gleaner thread that is the last Gleaner tested and the second last combine evaluated for public consumption.
3% is what PAMI used, I suspect if they fired up again 2% would become the standard and you'd be right!

I planted some of Rod's trays when we stripped in '13, didn't seem to matter where I read from the losses were pretty well the same and under 0.5% all losses together at feeder drive limit and around 60 to 70 tonnes an hour.
The stripper sure made the combine losses low as I think most losses were header as pan position didn't seem to affect seed count at only 3 or 4 per sq/ft.

 

[phantom970]

I dont think i would be to worried about what everyone else is doing. Just work out the actual cost per acre or hectare and do what you think is best for you. Useing a tool like Rods Harvest Calc, will actually show you that you can have alot of seeds per square foot and its still bugger all actual dollar loss per hectare. Think of the bigger picture, re: getting your bulk tonnes off before weather.

And if your over near the neighbours JD again, look closer to the left wheel track and i reckon you will see alot more seed than in the middle. Thats what axial style rotors do with strippers. They tend to chuck it out one side where you cant see it.

For your reference, in OZ, we will have anywhere from 5-10 seeds loss from the stripper and 20-50 seeds from the combine.

 

[torriem]

From the testing I've done on several machines of different colors, losses better than 2% are very hard to come by. I also suspect the more horsepower you have, the faster you can throw grain over on any machine. And most losses seem to be separator (rotor) losses. Judging by the green fields around here after post-harvest irrigation, I'd say in small grains everyone is losing a fair amount. But it's amazing that any machine can keep 97-98% of the crop in at the harvest speeds we are able to go.

We put a pan under the feederhouse and drop it with a cable. It can catch the entire width of the windrow out the back of the combine, so it catches everything. Our machines are Case, though, so it's super fast to drop straw for testing purposes.

I built a little spreadsheet that anyone is welcome to snag and use, designed to calculate losses based on the width and height of the sample pan (or the full cut width of the combine if you're catching the windrow) using a weighed loss sample, not a seed count. The spreadsheet is preloaded with various common units (metric and old-fashioned) and conversion factors, and you can add your own. I also added a seed count estimate based on the weighed loss sample, in case you want to generate a number to use to check the weight against. Weighing is a bit of a chore, but it's way more accurate than seed counting.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1O2Erbvzh05LhLUcHU8_JYZ91eZzaR8z05MWQQkJyW0g/edit?usp=sharing

When you click the link it will be read-only. You can either add it to your Google Drive cloud and run it there (and on your phone with Google Sheets or most spreadsheet apps), or download it as an xlsx file and use Excel or LibreOffice to run it. Maybe someone will find it of use.

One thing I've learned about losses is that there comes a point when you have to stop measuring them and just be happy for what you are able to take off the field. I have a hunch that there's an uncertainty principle involved here--the act of measuring losses creates losses. Also most combines don't spread the losses evenly out the back, which makes measuring harder.

 

[lostcause]

I put a kicker bar in found the part # somewhere here on the forum I think it helped I didn't count but had to get on hands and knees and look fairly hard too find wheat on the ground. it is a sunnybrook part with a agco # I think sba0352?

 

[dpilot83]

Thanks for al the thoughts everyone.

I was also struggling with a dirty sample in the bin.

It turns out that most of my problems setting the machine were related to having no frame of reference. This is my first year harvesting wheat. Always in the past I had hired custom harvesters so really the only wheat samples I saw were after it bat been cleaned and was now seed wheat. That is probably a tough gig for a combine to follow.

So anyway, in my quest for wheat that looked like seed, I had the sieve closed down to 5. Looking at my tickets, I think I would be well served to open the sieve more so I can get up to a higher dock. I was running 0.3% to 1%, mostly 0.6% or less while our custom harvester crew was running us up to 1.0% at a minimum and usually higher than that.

I suppose if I ran fewer returns I would grind less, have less rotor loss and perhaps run higher ground speed.

I have been running the chaffer wide open to prevent shoe loss. I guess if my sample is not too dirty (according to elevator) I will start opening the sieve more. Perhaps that will allow more air through and also increase shoe capacity. Maybe I won't need to have the chaffer open so wide after that?

Almost done with wheat for the year so I'll have to save much more learning for next year but I really appreciate the responses from this thread. I think I'll order a set of trays here soon as well. Thanks again everyone.

 

[ehoff1]

e truggled with the same thing. Had a good talk with Mike at PFP and he gave me several really good tips. First run 6 full rows of filler bars. We had the 7th ready but never installed it. He said that if its going out the rotor its a threshing problem. You have to trick the machine into thinking the threshing area is full so run your combine cylinder speed down around 500. We actually ran it between 400 and 550. Which type of cylinder bars you run makes a difference. We run the tall wide spaced which are about the worse. Talk to mike if you need that info. Drop the spreader off and windrow the stuff out of the cylinder and you get a really goodlook at what you are losing. I also made 3 sweeps similar to PFP sweeps bu the goal is to give the sweeps a tremendous fan effect to blow the stuff out of the cylinder. I also made spacers to bolt under the homemade sweeps to get them closer to the helical bars. They are with-in .5". They bolt on just like the pfp sweeps but are welded on the bracket much more lengthwise of the cylinder and are laid back more like a fan blade. If you email me I will send pictures my address is good in my agtalk profile. So we run the concave at 0, 6 filler plates, 1 reverse bar in each row, cylinder speed between 400 and 550. I think the chaffer was at 18 and the sieve at 8 with the fan full speed.

 

[ehoff1]

I should have stated that I have a S67.

 

[dpilot83]

Thanks ehoff. I really appreciate your input. It might take a bit here because we're in a busy time but I'm planning on looking your email up and getting those pictures here after awhile. Thanks again.

 

[jesepy]

So I have been reading the forum for about three years but this is my first post not real good in the computer world ! I find the talk on losses a interesting one you can catch seeds work out % all different options ! But me personally work on about 12 seeds per square foot on a 30 ft front 16 per 40 ft front if you get to that your going pretty well ! If a few more than that no real concern ! I am sure someone can tell me if I am near the mark or not weight wise and % I don't know never worked it out ! But working for other farmers and our own stuff no one has ever got into me for throwing to much out and always get the job next year ! But I am sure the debate will continue for many years over many beers what is appropriate loss cheers !!