His Combine Cleaner Sucks Trash From Grain

His combine cleaner sucks trash from grain COMBINES Miscellaneous 14-1-15 Bill Christian, Pullman, Wash., used an old fan, plastic drainage tubing, sheet metal, and hardware cloth to build a combine "vacuum cleaner" that mounts just above the grain tank on his International Harvester 1470 combine. As grain passes from the clean grain elevator to the grain tank auger, trash is sucked out the top by the fan or falls through a screen at the bottom of the cleaner and drops to the ground. The 18-in. dia. fan is belt-driven by the combine's clean grain unloading auger. Trash is drawn into a back pressure chamber (an L-shaped sheet metal box bolted to the top of the elevator head), sucked up a 6-in. dia. drainage tube, through the fan and down more tubing onto the ground. Heavier trash such as weed seeds and clumps of dirt drops through a screen at the bottom of the chamber and into a 2-in. dia. pipe that ex-tends through the side of the grain tank. "I built it because the fan on my 1470 combine doesn't have enough volume to clean all of the trash out of grain passing over the sieves and into the elevator," says Christian. "Using suction, rather than blasting air through the grain, is more effective in lifting trash away from grain. The L-shaped design is an important feature because it prevents grain from being sucked out by the fan along with trash when the combine is on steep hills. Since we installed the cleaner our elevator operator recognizes my grain because there's never a dust storm during unloading. I can also get more grain in my bins. Before I built my cleaner there was always a 4-in. layer of dirt on the bottom of the bin. Now there's barely a layer of dust." The cleaning chamber, built from 14 ga. metal, is 8 in. wide - the same width as the elevator - and is built in two parts that are bolted together. A short length of aluminum pipe welded to the chamber connects it to the plastic tubing. Christian unbolts the top half of the cleaner to get the combine in his shed. The screen, made from hardware cloth, extends diagonally from 2 in. above the bottom of the cleaner to just above the elevator auger. A 2-in. dia. hole in the bottom of the chamber allows trash to fall into the pipe. Christian says he plans to cut a slit in the chamber so he can install screens equipped with handles. "The screens will be of varying sizes depending on the type of crop I'm harvesting," says Christian. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Bill Christian, Rt. 2, Box 674, Pullman, Wash. 99163 (ph 509 334-5933).

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