WESTERN PRODUCER — John Deere recently announced new innovations to its combine lineup at the Agritechnica machinery show in Germany.
John Deere showed three new technologies available now or will be available soon.
Harvesting grain, especially small grains, on slopes challenges getting the grain cleaned as it floats toward the down-slope direction.
John Deere has its Hillmaster line for significant slopes, but its reach is limited, especially because Hillmaster combines can’t be fitted with tracks.
As a result, the company has developed active slope adjustment, which uses belts to adjust the cleaning shoe, keeping it level for better grain separation and more even chaff spreading out of the back of the machine.
“When we’re on side slopes, we need a system that’s able to level the material on the shoe,” says Jonathan Edwards, a product manager for combines in Europe for John Deere, during an interview at Agritechnica.
The tilt angle is determined by the drain compensation module on the Starfire 7500 receiver.
“By levelling, it’s also preparing the material to the residue system evenly which will make residue management much, much better,” says Edwards.
In testing during this year’s harvest, the company found that at a six percent slope, there was an improvement to the performance of the shoe at 107 percent, with a 0.5 percent loss.
In other words, we’re doubling the performance of the shoe,” he says.
The tilt system was fit on a standard shoe, which meant the capacity of the shoe was not affected. That also means that a combine should be able to be retrofitted with the active belt system at a dealership in the future.
The company will have more of the active slope adjustment systems in combines for testing in 2024, with a limited product launch likely in 2025.
A unique new draper head belt design from John Deere keeps more small-seeded crops like canola and mustard, on the header and into the combine.
Edwards says the grain saver belts can reduce canola cutterbar loss by up to 25 percent. The pattern on the belts keeps canola seeds from rolling down the belt back to the cutterbar before it is fed into the combine.
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