The most critical aspect of setting up a Rotary combine and stripper header is ensuring that an even load of material is maintained across the full width of the sieve from the rotor and that the material is split evenly between the rotor and sieves for separation. The direction of the rotor naturally tends to load the left side of the sieve, this then leads to losses on the left side and under-utilisation of the right side of the machine. In order to create an equal loading the sidehill sieve dividers and plates must be removed to allow the material to spread out, the right side shoe feed auger deflector must be removed and the left side auger deflector must be adjusted all the way out. Rear Separator blanking plates can then be used to fine tune the job, generally either 2 or 3 rows (8 or 12) are needed. It is very important to perform a ‘kill stop’ (stop the combine fully loaded) to check the grain and material other than grain (M.O.G.) distribution patterns within the combine.
The combine is not feeding smoothly Ensure that the feed accelerator roller at the top of the feeder house is in the fast position (inner pulleys) and that the large (26 tooth) feeder chain drive sprocket is fitted on the right side at the front of the feederhouse.
If ‘slugging’ is still experienced it may be necessary to lower the concaves.
Combine rotor loss is experienced Raise concaves to ensure grain is forced through, adjust rotor speed & check grain loss monitor.
Combine sieve loss is experienced Generally opening up the sieves more and increasing the fan speed will give greater sieve capacity, ensure that the balance is correct of splitting the load between the sieves and rotor, it may be that the rotor is way under capacity yet you are overloading the sieves. In this case it will be necessary to fit more blanking bands in the rotor to prevent such a high proportion of material falling onto the sieves.
Unthreshed heads appear in grain sample In this case it will be necessary to either close the concave a little to provide better threshing or fit additional concave blanking bands. It is initially recommended to fit these in position 1, 2 and 5. It may be necessary to fit these in position 3 also. In particularly tough threshing varieties it might be beneficial to close the bottom sieve and run these unthreshed heads through the combines return system.
