Combines sunflowers

John, Sunflowers are no problem with Gleaner rotary. Number one is don't overthresh and allow crop to spin threw cage. Any problem with shoe comes from to much junk to seperate. Moisture of stalk and head can make a large difference on what ends up on the shoe. If you have a P1 in your R70 it would be a good time to shim helicals by 1_4" or double stack them and add the green stem kit. If you have the P3 in your R70 you should get your cylinder bars extended to discharge if you havn't allready. Also with P3 it would be best to install seperator cover kit. Also on either P1 or P3 it helps a bunch to install filler bars in concave that are as thick as cross bars to prevent grinding of stalks and heads. We havn't toyed with special sieves or chaffers for we find the best thing to do is prevent breaking up heads and stalks. Thick filler bars would have to be removed for most other crops but could help in some other crops that mainly just neads to be spun threw the cage. Hope that helps. Dan

The pans made by lucke Manufacturing work very well for sunflowers. They fit on an 800 head but probably are best left on a head permanently, rather than taking them on and off.

I think the only time the JD row head is needed is when the crop fell over. Otherwise the pans with a reel work very well. I think there are enough cheap old rigid heads around where you could set one up and leave it.

Sunflowers are difficult to clean with the seed being so light weight. 5-10% F.M. is not uncommon. I hope someone else can give a better answer.

first time using the gleaner in flowers yesterday. combined 1 hopper before getting rained out. started out set up per op manual. form there. 1: close seive to clean up sample. 2: plug tailings elevator with flowers. 3: open seive slightely. 4: sample still dirty, close chaffer some. helped lots. 5: rain. when i get going again will play more with chaffer setting. seems to help keep head particles off of seive and in tern in tank. i have only empty seeds going out the back but just would like to have sample a little cleaner. probally 3-5 % dock now. hope this helps some. any other info appreciated. chewy

If head and stock are dry you will have little problems. If not you need to do some amount of tricks. Some of the things preached hear for other crops are first steps. Helical filler over feeder opening and whatever degree of steep pitch helicals you can get the guy talked into. You must try prevent the second pass over the concave and helical tricks will do this. One trick we used in the old P1s and early on with the P3s is install very thick filler bars in concave. You would need to make these filler bars and I think you could get by with filling every other opening. Now when you get it over to seperator side in good condition you need it to keep flowing. It is surely best to use all forward cylinder bars but you'll have better luck yet if you would install some rotor sweeps (the more the better for wet flowers and slower cylinder speeds used in edible seed crops). High wide seperator grate will be best of what is factory available but there are cage material seperator grates available from loewen. I have smoothened out both high and low wire seperator grates by welding short pieces of wires on top of wires between crossbars. I do every other wire on low narrow grates and every one on high wire grates. You may want to pick and choose what seems best to you for the mix of crops you are in. let me know what you are thinking. Have a good one.

I forgot to ask if you have a CDF around there you could try. The reduced cylinder diameter might be a plus for them flowers but some of the other tricks would still be a big plus. Good luck

Dan, how slow should i run the cylinderIJ currentely around 400. 8820 in edibles we run the cylinder at 125, is this too slow to keep things moving. am running an N7, all forward bars, double stacked helicoils, and filler plates in first 6 rows of lowen extended concave. plenty of green stalks and most heads are wet. thanks chad

Minimum RPM is approx 200. I bet you won't change sample to much by slowing or speeding up cylinder but I would sure try 100 or more both directions. I wouldn't know without tring. You might think about mellowing your concave even more. Maybe install the thick filler bars in every other location. One thing you should surely check with an extended concave in a P1 is the clearance at the rear. You may be opened wide at the front but rear is still much closer than you want. We've never installed extended concave in P1 but the ones that have showed up in our area have created some challenges. Geometrics that Gleaner designed into mount locations gets thrown off with extended concave. You may have to slot rear mounts rearward if you can't get enough clearance. Had a guy have to do this in corn one time when I found out he had extended concave. Hope this helps.

I have an N7 and use an 853 to cut flowers. With an airfoil chaffer I set the sieve at 7_16 or so and run the air on 7 or open. Ground speed is around 5 to 6.5 in 2500 pound flowers. Foreign material usually runs around 1.5 to 3.5. It gets a little dirty on the ends when I turn but otherwise is very good both in the bin and on the ground. I have found the best thing to do with an adjustable chaffer is to give it to somebody you do not like.