Combines NH draper header w floating sickle

We saw the draper in Fargo at Big Iron, but our 36' MacDon works good on our beans. MacDon came down cause we were digging dirt, and changed the angle of the sicle. No more dirt digging. I asked our Cat dealer about the new header and he shook his head and said they had a few, I think 3 out. "They are not working like we thought they would" he said. Our Macdon is on our 480, we use it on 50-60 bu. irrigated beans.

I think MacDon makes the New Holland draper head. I am not sure though.

No, Honeybee makes New Hollands Headers

Macdon makes the flex draper that NH is using now, not sure about the other drapers though.

Honey Bee makes the draper headers for NH and I prefer them to the McDon. However McDon is building the flexible one I am talking about. I have a 30' NH-HoneyBee that I really like, but I never thought of using it on soybeans. Sounds like it can be done. I'm wondering if I need modificationsIJ

I had a chance to watch MacDon's so called "flex" draper in soys this fall. You couldn't give me one of those things to combine soybeans with where we farm. It's just a 36' draper broke into three rigid sections with hinges between them. leaves tall bean stubble with pods still attached all over the place unless it is nearly perfectly flat. If I wanted to combine my soybeans with a 12' rigid cutterbar I'd go back to combining with a 4400 JD, 715 IH or M2 Gleaner. Hey, maybe you could put an old love bar on each section of that new draper. Here I thought the JD guys could pile it deep at times, Don definitely has those guys whipped with this NH blather.

StillFarming, how does the cutter bar flex_hinge at those hinge pointsIJ There was one last year down here but I din't see it run. I thought it broke in 5-6 sections from the guys I heard talk about itIJ I probably just misunderstood what they where saying though. Some must have magic wands available to them, they wave it over their equipment and crops and they always better results than other'sIJ JD

JD, I guess Stillfarming thinks I can't see if this header was missing some of the beans.Anyway the header does work very well on the CR combine. This was in very hilly ground W_ terraces. I'll wait for some additional reports before I discard or accept the concept.

I didn't get a chance to look at the cutterbar closely and how it flexes as it was a test machine we heard about through the local grapevine and the CNH folks really weren't excited about us being there. All I got to see was the job it was doing in the field. You can take a look at it the MacDon website, it shows three hinged sections but no detail on the cutterbar. It would probably work great in small grains in rolling ground but 12' rigid cutterbar sections won't work in soybeans on the ground where we farm. If you find that magic wand I could sure use it on my crops and menagerie of machinery. Always looking for a way to improve the performance of both!

In your orignal post you infer that you have not seen it run yourself and are only reporting what you have heard in a report from a field demonstration. You also ask if anyone has seen it run in the field and that you saw it at the factory last summer. Well, I saw it in the field and I wasn't impressed. From what I gathered in your post you have not seen it run but sure are promoting what a GREAT job it does, which to me is of little value. Drapers are great in wheat and other small grains as they feed the crop head first so that the head recieves the intial impact and acceleration in the threshing section of the combine. This feature of the draper is great in small grains but has little value in soybeans were the pods are located the entire length of the plant. A draper head will have no feeding advantage over a properly adjusted flex head with an auger. So based on my personal observations in the field you lose ground following performance with the rigid cutterbar sections on the hinged "flex" draper with no advantages gained over the flex head with the auger. I've found it to be more productive and profitable to be color blind and do real unbiased research and observation vs. blinding touting whatever company's latest and greatest claims.