1977 - Volume #1, Issue #5, Page #04
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Owner Reports On New IH "Rotary"
“It’s a new concept in threshing,” said Les and Rodney Renner, the owners of this new 24 International combine.
Instead of a cylinder and straw walkers, this new machine has a rotor. All threshing and most of the separating of grain is done in the first couple feet of the rotor.
International has been very hush-hush on this new machine. They have built only 300 and 11 of them are being used in South Dakota. It probably won’t be available on the open market until next year. So far there isn’t even any literature out on the machine. Actually, International made their fist rotor combine 11 years ago. They have been working ever since perfecting their idea. The combine will harvest everything from corn, wheat and beans to millet and rice.
Straw goes three and a half times round the rotor before it reaches the end, whereas the conventional cylinder only works on the straw about one-third of a turn.
The machine costs between $55,000 and $60,000.
The electronics on the machine are amazing. All the major shafts have a monitor and digital read-outs in the air-conditioned cab.
This machine has a 436 cubic inch turbo drive diesel engine. It is rated at 165 hp. It has a 175 bushel wheat bin and when the machine is loaded it weighs about 30,000 pounds.
“When they were trying to sell us this new machine,” Les said, “they wined us and dined us down at Mitchell and told us all the things this new rotor would do. At that time I said to Rodney – if that machine will do only half of what they say it will do, I’d be satisfied.”
So far Renners have harvested 200 acres with the new machine and it is working as good as the engineers said it would.
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