Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1544539
TO: Larry Gutekunst SUBJECT: Trip to MacDon Industries Ltd. @ Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, to Observe a Draper Header DATE OF TRIP: August 28-29, 1984 The MacDon draper header was installed on a Massey Ferguson 860 combine. It started out as a standard 30-foot swather platform and was modified to connect to a Massey paddle feeder house. I was impressed with the installation. It would be difficult for a person not f amiliar with the project to tell the combine and header were not a totally integrated design. The center structure is similar to the center structure on a swather. Normally, the center opening is offset to the left. New supports were designed and built incorporating the MF hookup. They are located to center the platform on the feeder house. The platform is secured to the combine by a rigid combine mount instead of a parallel link floating swather type mount. The drapers and cutterbar are at their normal operating angle when the feeder house front is vertical. Center delivery is by a fore and aft draper the same width as the feeder house opening. The rear draper roller is vertically adjustable, designed so the draper is directly in line with the feeder house floor at the bottom of its range. MacDon engineers evaluated the draper at different positions and found the low position worked best. The front roller is located about 10 inches in back of the cutterbar with a piece of sheet metal filling the gap be tween the cutterbar and draper. Lateral drapers overlap the center draper a few inches. I did not measure the distance between drapers, but I would estimate it to be about 52 inches. There is a small gap between the fore and aft draper and the feeder house. MacDon engineers located a piece of sheet metal under this opening to direct material falling through the opening into a catch mechanism. They had run tests at several draper speeds. Maximum loss, free grain and unthreshed, was .08 percent. The highest loss was at the lowest draper speed. They showed me sample catch bags, collected over a 300-foot distance. I feel material collected was insignificant compared to the amount I would expect to be thrown out by an auger conveyor over the same distance. MacDon also made provisions for an auxiliary beater in the throat to direct material into the feed opening. It was a blade beater similar to those in the MF paddle feeder house. I never saw this beater in operation. MacDon engineers said it tossed material out of the header and it did not improve performance. All three drapers are powered by an independent hydraulic system on the header. Lateral drapers are driven by hydraulic motors at the outer ends of the header plumbed in series. One flow control valve varies the speed of all three drapers. An additional valve is installed in the fore and aft draper circuit so its speed can be varied independently. The reel is driven from the combine hydraulics. Field performance of the header was outstanding. I observed it cutting in oats and wheat in a variety of crop conditions. MacDon engineers had found a 30-acre field of oats to test in the first day I was there. They felt fluffy oats would be one of the toughest crops to feed in the center. There were no problems. Even bunches tossed up by the reel in down crop fed smoothly in the center. We were not experienced with the MF combine so we may not have been running it at its maximum capacity. We checked cylinder speed with the combine empty and used 10 percent speed reduction for our power limit. The combine was either power or operator limited. Feed to the cylinder was extremely smooth. Our maximum cutting speed was 6.5 mph. The second day we cut in wheat for a different farmer. The farmer, owner of a White 9700, drove the combine most of the time. He praised the header, but he was not very flattering toward the combine. He felt his 9700 would have about a 30 percent increase in capacity with the draper header. He told me he had ordered a 30-foot header to replace his 24-foot but cancelled his order after using the draper. He said he would modify a head from one of his swathers next year if he could not purchase one. Performance in wheat was just as good as in oats (can't improve on perfection). The farmer knew I was there to observe the header so he drove the combine harder than we engineers had the day before. He pushed it as hard as he could until the tailings monitor came on, stopped to let the machine clean out and tore off again. Feeding was extremely smooth, never the EDITOR'S NOTE: The following is Part I of correspondence on the draper header project from the 1980s. Watch for Part II in the Summer Edition of Old Allis News. Because these files were gleaned from 1980s software, some parts may be missing. A-C engineer's notes on draper project 40 OLD ALLIS NEWS