Down Corn Retrievers

1987 - Volume #11, Issue #1, Page #21

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"Last fall they made the difference between running and not running the combine. Corn was down so bad that I was stopping all the time. I even tried harvesting in only one direction. Then, I hit on the idea of these corn retrievers. Once I put them on, I didn't have to stop once," says Illinois farmer Dave White, of Farmersville, who designed and built the special attachments to feed down corn into his 1440 International combine.
"The down corn retrievers look like five mini-trenchers mounted over the top of the snouts. I took corn picker gathering chain and mounted it on a track made of 4-ft. long sections of 1¢ by 2-in. tubing. The five retrievers are on a shaft chain-driven by an orbital motor hooked into the cylinder control for the combine reel's grain table. The chains turn about ¢-ft. per second," notes White.
In good standing corn, he can pivot the retrievers up and out of the way. However, the chain still turns when the retrievers are in the upright position. When in the working position, the chains ride just a few inches off the snout to feed stalks into the feed-in auger. White says that with the chain just a few inches over the feed-in auger he doesn't need to install a reel to keep stalks from bunching up at the auger.
He also equipped his 4-row header with a rotor over each end snout to push stalks into the header. He notes that the rotors also keep ears from hitting the side of the head and bouncing out.
Each rotor's built out of a 5 ft. section of 2-in. square tubing. To the tubing, he fastened four sections of 4-in. wide long-wearing belting, also 5 ft. long.
The rotors are powered off the same shaft and orbital motor that power the corn retrievers and run at about 150 to 200 rpms. The 10-ft. long shaft runs along the top of the header and connects to the V-belt drive on each pulley. White notes that he used about $500 worth of scrap parts to put the retrievers together and about $250 in the original building of the rotors.
White is interested in marketing the items as either complete assemblies or as a plans kit for do-it-yourselfers.
Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Dave White, Rt. 1, Box 162, Farmersville, Ill. 62533 (ph 217 227-3659).

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Down corn retrievers COMBINES Down Corn 11-1-21 "Last fall they made the difference between running and not running the combine. Corn was down so bad that I was stopping all the time. I even tried harvesting in only one direction. Then, I hit on the idea of these corn retrievers. Once I put them on, I didn't have to stop once," says Illinois farmer Dave White, of Farmersville, who designed and built the special attachments to feed down corn into his 1440 International combine. "The down corn retrievers look like five mini-trenchers mounted over the top of the snouts. I took corn picker gathering chain and mounted it on a track made of 4-ft. long sections of 1¢ by 2-in. tubing. The five retrievers are on a shaft chain-driven by an orbital motor hooked into the cylinder control for the combine reel's grain table. The chains turn about ¢-ft. per second," notes White. In good standing corn, he can pivot the retrievers up and out of the way. However, the chain still turns when the retrievers are in the upright position. When in the working position, the chains ride just a few inches off the snout to feed stalks into the feed-in auger. White says that with the chain just a few inches over the feed-in auger he doesn't need to install a reel to keep stalks from bunching up at the auger. He also equipped his 4-row header with a rotor over each end snout to push stalks into the header. He notes that the rotors also keep ears from hitting the side of the head and bouncing out. Each rotor's built out of a 5 ft. section of 2-in. square tubing. To the tubing, he fastened four sections of 4-in. wide long-wearing belting, also 5 ft. long. The rotors are powered off the same shaft and orbital motor that power the corn retrievers and run at about 150 to 200 rpms. The 10-ft. long shaft runs along the top of the header and connects to the V-belt drive on each pulley. White notes that he used about $500 worth of scrap parts to put the retrievers together and about $250 in the original building of the rotors. White is interested in marketing the items as either complete assemblies or as a plans kit for do-it-yourselfers. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Dave White, Rt. 1, Box 162, Farmersville, Ill. 62533 (ph 217 227-3659).

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