Combines Questions

[lex]

Dakota, can you elaborate more. Why do your customers want you out of the lexionsIJ What do they dislike about themIJ Are they valid reasons or just color blindIJ

 

[dakota]

Just to name two examples: One customer has an old 1460 and asked me why my dockage was three times as high as his. I knew the combines couldn't do any better, but I called the rep anyway. After he was done the dockage was four times as high as the 1460 (cracking and dirt) The second customer had a 9610. Just by standing at the auger at the bin you could tell which combine the grain was from. I took pictures. When he took his grain to town the following winter, same thing again - three times the dockage. That's just besides the inability to thresh out hardthreshing varieties and the constant grain loss trouble.

 

[lex]

It must be very bad Dakota if yo are comparing to a 1460 and a 9610. The old 14XX IH gave a some of the worst samples possible at out local elevator. My 9600 is not much better. I presume you are talking about spring wheatIJ They were with 470's correctIJ

 

[Harvester]

I'd like to give my fellow Dakotans more credit than that for having the common sense to realize that a combine is like a computer - garbage in, garbage out. I've been setting and running combines for nearly 30 years (is that real experienceIJ) and I've operated and helped set my customer's lexions a number of times in everything from edible beans to corn to wheat to soybeans and have found them to be a remarkably easy machine to set, especially in hard-thresh wheats. We have never had trouble getting superior grain quality and samples out of the lexions, even when the red and green ones struggled. The difficulties you experienced have a root cause. My, experience, with the lexion indicates that the concave needs periodic monitoring to maintain its level. There are a number of possible explanations, that is only one. But a properly set lexion simply has more potential for capacity than any other design out on the market right now.

 

[dakota]

In this particular case it was Durum and the 470R . The 1460 and the 9610 both accomplished around 1% dockage. Burned wheat or hard threshing varieties like Tam cause a lot of trouble, too.

 

[dakota]

If you have a wrong concave in a combine you can set what you want and never get it threshed or cleaned. I have seen that happen more than once with company people in the field not getting the job done.

 

[lex]

dakota, are you saying the 475r with the incorrect concave would not clean as well as a 1460IJ I am confused, who had the wrong concaveIJ

 

[dakota]

The concave is just my personal theory. After seeing all the combining problems and the changes from the 470 to the 470R, I learned how much difference the concave makes. All American concaves (CNH, JD, AGCO) are wire concaves. That's what the 470R got. It improved the corn combining very much, but not wheat. So my theory was, if one could close the lexion concave to zero (there must be a reason why everybody else does that) and the concave radius would matche the cylinder radius, like on other colors, the lexion might be able to thresh the heads on US wheat as good as the other colors. If one would than increase the cleaning capacity on the 470 to reduce the grain loss, it might keep up with a 9650 STS. If one would put a wire concave under the APS, to get rid of the grain, that the APS threshes out, one could probably reduce the cracking, too. Right now I think this thing in front of the cylinder with that fancy name is nothing but a straw shredder overloading the cleaning system with MOG. Again, this is my theory after many hundred CASE hours, well over 1100 lexion hours and many more Deere combine hours. I also know that in certain conditions the lexion setup might work better, as I've been told by Canadian pen friends.

 

[tobaboy]

Hey Ralph, it was definitely tougher then '03, but we did get some dry conditions as we couldn't bale the staw at times whereas the year before it was never a problem. We didn't end up drying too much grain, most of it came off dry.

 

[dakota]

Adam, talking about baling. Can you judge how much the lexion tears up the straw compared to other rotariesIJ