Concave Popper Stops Combine Plug-Ups

Concave Popper Stops Combine Plug-Ups COMBINES Accessories 20-3-38 In the 1970's and 80's, Washington farmer and custom combiner Ben Grant owned 13 Massey Ferguson combines, replacing them every year. That made him one of the company's best customers. He was also one of the most innovative so Massey Ferguson engineers regularly brought their latest prototypes to him to test. (In fact, he still owns one prototype combine that the company never put on the market. He was allowed to keep it but had to agree he would never sell it.) Recently, Grant's one-of-a-kind self-propelled grain cart was featured in FARM SHOW (Vol. 19, No. 4). In the course of discussing several other pieces of equipment he's built, he happened to mention that one of the best ideas he ever had never came on the market and has never - to his knowledge - been installed on any combine other than his own. Called a "concave popper", he says the add-on device totally eliminates cylinder plug-ups in his Massey combine. He feels the idea would work on any combine with conventional cylinder and concave. What he did was to install a sensor on the cylinder that monitor's rpm's, and a small hydraulic cylinder on each corner of the concave. If the cylinder's rpm's drop 10 percent or more, a hydraulic valve opens, activating the four cylinders in less than 4/ 10ths of a second, opening the concave up to let whatever material is slowing the cylinder down pass through. After a 4 second delay, the cylinders retract, pulling the con-cave back into operating position. Operation of the system is totally automatic. "It's almost impossible to plug up this combine now. We harvest a lot of irrigated crops that often have tough, viney stems. We used to waste a lot of time clearing out plug-ups. Now they just pass through. You'll be driving along and all of a sudden you hear æboink' as the concave pops up and lets a slug through. You don't have to do anything, although you can ad-just the system to make it more or less sensitive depending on what conditions you're operating under." Grant used conventional 1 1/2 in. dia. cylinders on the concave, positioning them between drive chains. When activated, they open the concave 4 1/2 in. wide at the front edge and 2 1/2 in. at the back. "You could feed a 2 by 4 into it and it would roll right through. We tried to plug it up once by feeding wet burlap sacks through the cylinder with the concave set tight with just a 1/8-in. gap. We got up to 8 wet sacks fed in together before it plugged," says Grant, who says he doesn't have any plans to put the "concave popper" on the market but "wouldn't mind if some manufacturer picked up on the idea. It would save a lot of hassles for most combiners", he notes. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Ben Grant, 751 Fanning Rd., Pasco, Wash. 99301 (ph 509 547-9977).

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