[daled2]

Finally making some visible progress on my L2 refurb.

The friend who is helping me is a diehard Case guy. We were just shooting the breeze while we worked and he commented that the size (length) of the separator raddle (the one behind the feederhouse) doesn't make sense to him. If 80% of the threshing is done at the cylinder/concave in the feederhouse why do you need so much raddle length behind it. For that matter why send the threshed product up the feederhouse raddle and then dump it on the 5 ft + sep raddle. He says that is way inefficient.

Me being a Gleaner fan didn't have a satisfactory reason other than the design had been around for a long time, it worked as well or better than other systems and the Gleaner engineers aren't stupid.

Can anyone shed any more thoughts on why the above exists and is it as good and efficient as I'd like to believe.

 

[tbk]

Well, let's see. The thresher raddle and the thresher beater deposit, throw and blow grain and unthreshed heads and straw onto the separator raddle. Now there really is quite a bit of wind developed by the cylinder and thresher beater that can carry material some distance on the separator raddle. That's why there's that swinging metal curtain to retard corn and beans and even out the crop mat as it's carried to the end of the separator raddle and falls through cleaning fan blast for more efficient cleaning. Small grains carry such a high volume of straw and MOG that you need to pin the curtain up. Regardless, raddle conveyors are the gentlest method of conveying grains, which is why Gleaner has always been known for delivering quality grain and beans. Compare other contemporary manufacturers that use beaters/impellors or auger beds to deliver grain to the air blast. They may be more "efficient" but it certainly does not contribute to grain quality.

In addition these raddle conveyors are just a lot less complicated than competitive designs and require less maintenance since there's just a lot fewer moving parts to contend with.

So, in the end it's a matter of providing a cleaner sample with better grain integrity. Anyway, that's my take on it!