Deere T series rear concave modification

[darrenjlobb]

Afternoon...

Looking to try and improve the seperation in barley on a T560 machine... Have already jacked up rear axle, fitted several walker fishbacks / extensions and auger speed flights... but feel the combine has alot more potential capacity in tough / heavy straw conditions if setup in a more suitable manor.

Have read in a few places the later MY T's had a modified rear separator concave in them with an openable door part way round? Does anyone on here have a machine with this fitted / any more info? or even better, any pictures of this?

Have been debating removing a row or two from middle / rear of my rear concave, has anyone tried this ? Only cutting Barley and Wheat, with extremely high straw volumes!!

Losses are just about always going over in the straw, so feel theres room for more capacity if it had more chance to get down onto the chaffer.

Anyone have any thoughts / info?

Cheers

 

[snipe]

I tried open mine on a t550 this year on some wheat that was about 16/17% but the crop was really ripe and straw braking up a little . Didn’t make much difference, but a 5 to 10% increase would be hard to see or measure. It might make more of a difference in barley with longer straw.

 

[darrenjlobb]

I tried open mine on a t550 this year on some wheat that was about 16/17% but the crop was really ripe and straw braking up a little . Didn’t make much difference, but a 5 to 10% increase would be hard to see or measure. It might make more of a difference in barley with longer straw.

What model year is your machine?

Do you have any photos of the concave / info on what exactly opens / changes?

 

[homefarm]

We have a MY17 T560. There is a lever which opens the first four ,I think,concave sections on the front, a bit like the concave filler plates in reverse. It is either in or out

This year walker losses seemed worse in all crops and to be honest I only remembered to try this adjustment halfway through wheat.
I think it did help, perhaps I could go 0.5 km faster with same loss, but losses still rose steeply after that.
I am hoping it was a year thing and next year will be different again because it did seem different from the two previous seasons.

I did a bit of googling to find a picture, there was one in the leaflet 16/17, but looks like it has changed again now to what looks like a standard concave with very large spacings

 

[darrenjlobb]

We have a MY17 T560. There is a lever which opens the first four ,I think,concave sections on the front, a bit like the concave filler plates in reverse. It is either in or out

This year walker losses seemed worse in all crops and to be honest I only remembered to try this adjustment halfway through wheat.
I think it did help, perhaps I could go 0.5 km faster with same loss, but losses still rose steeply after that.
I am hoping it was a year thing and next year will be different again because it did seem different from the two previous seasons.

I did a bit of googling to find a picture, there was one in the leaflet 16/17, but looks like it has changed again now to what looks like a standard concave with very large spacings

Interesting, it was certainly a tricky year, first half of the season everything I was cutting wasnt really fit to be cut, but grain was dry so had to push on.

Any chance you could link to said photo / page? Struggling to find / would be interested to see the 16/17 setup....

 

[homefarm]

This is the 2020 version on the website 10% extra over the concave fitted in our machine I presume. This is where the picture of ours used to be.
This one looks a lot simpler has it just got less wires? Maybe this is the one to copy?

Xtra Large separator
TANGENTIAL PLUS WITH INCREASED SEPARATION CAPACITY

Tangential Plus concave with up to 10 percent more performance
A patented rear separator grate is available for the T-Series Combines, which features 14 percent more openings in the separator grid and a fully rounded profile on the wires and cross bars. This creates a better separation effect thanks to a faster, unobstructed crop flow over the grid with a thinner layer of material thickness to boost the separation of kernels trapped in straw.

Two key points emerged from analysing the crop flow inside the combine under different conditions with different straw volumes. The centrifugal force together with the size of the grids are key points for achieving high separation, and a smooth separation grid surface ensures good straw quality and high material speed.
Show More

 

[homefarm]

I have thought JD was trying to copy the rear section of the 88 series Case rotor with this part of their combine. Same diameter rotor and talk of centrifugal force separation. The video shows the proven case keystock concaves massive gaps by comparison.

We to only cut cereals so may look at removing every other wire from this concave.

 

[Fragonard]

What year did the they change direction of crop flow, and then claimed a 5 Walker will match any 6 Walker.

 

[darrenjlobb]

Interesting, certainly much bigger gaps on that case rotary design concave...
Shame the older imagine like what you have in your machine isnt cached anywhere online, as i imagine Deere used the same base concave and modified it / hence wondered if i could do something similer to mine. Does drop the front few rows of tines out entirely? So just big open spaces? or are there some that stay present?
Don't want to commit to dropping a load out, and then finding its to much / overloading sieves with bits of straw and rubbish....putting them back in could be a farce!

 

[darrenjlobb]

Concave at rear just full of sections like this, would think removing every other finger would make considerable difference , assuming that it didn't cause to much material, question would be how many rows to do, and which ones!

 

[homefarm]

I have been out and had a look at ours, and it is like the 2020 one only we have 10 wires where the 2020 has 7.
We did have a MY15 for which had your type and the lever opened three or four rows as I described earlier and I thought this one was still the same.
The lever I moved this year increases the gap between the separator and the concave.
Case always said remember we are using a spin dryer and not a mangle give it room

Looks like you have the equivalent of 10 wires too if they have kept the sections across the concave the same size.
T series Jd sieves are huge so should cope with a bit more trash I think. Cereals only is very different to OSR and the other minor crops JD will have to consider in their overall design.

 

[darrenjlobb]

I have been out and had a look at ours, and it is like the 2020 one only we have 10 wires where the 2020 has 7.
We did have a MY15 for which had your type and the lever opened three or four rows as I described earlier and I thought this one was still the same.
The lever I moved this year increases the gap between the separator and the concave.
Case always said remember we are using a spin dryer and not a mangle give it room

Looks like you have the equivalent of 10 wires too if they have kept the sections across the concave the same size.
T series Jd sieves are huge so should cope with a bit more trash I think. Cereals only is very different to OSR and the other minor crops JD will have to consider in their overall design.

Thanks for the info, any chance you could measure the gap between the wires on yours? Just want to get idea for what there doing now vs me chopping every other finger out, as based on the look of the new design, I should be fairly safe to do that I think...
Did it used to open those rows up totally? As in, no wires at all just huge rectangular gaps? Cant decide if i should just remove them from first few sections to emulate that, or cut the fingers out and put them back in, one would think cutting every other finger out, and doing maybe more rows could be more effective, but maybe not.

Sieve loss certainly never an issue in general so fairly confident in being able to put alot more load on them, only problem may be when things are very fit / ripe, but then if i can get more material coming through I expect I will be able to open concave up / slow drum down alot from where I am at the moment and reduce the load more.

 

[homefarm]

The gap on ours is 25mm but the new one is plus 14% so must be around 28.5mm.
However we have 11 gaps with 10 wires over 355mm ish hard to be exact
11 gaps 275mm makes the wires 8mm
7 wires on new one so 56mm. So 299 divided by 8 gaps 37mm

The picture of the new one looks more like 37 than 28

 

[snipe]

Concave at rear just full of sections like this, would think removing every other finger would make considerable difference , assuming that it didn't cause to much material, question would be how many rows to do, and which ones!

On the rear concave it’s the full last 2 rows of those fingers that drop down 90 degrees and leave some big holes, but if it’s dry and straw braking up I think it may overload the chaffer section.

 

[Fragonard]

I have been out and had a look at ours, and it is like the 2020 one only we have 10 wires where the 2020 has 7.
We did have a MY15 for which had your type and the lever opened three or four rows as I described earlier and I thought this one was still the same.
The lever I moved this year increases the gap between the separator and the concave.
Case always said remember we are using a spin dryer and not a mangle give it room

Looks like you have the equivalent of 10 wires too if they have kept the sections across the concave the same size.
T series Jd sieves are huge so should cope with a bit more trash I think. Cereals only is very different to OSR and the other minor crops JD will have to consider in their overall design.

What's MY15?

 

[homefarm]

Manufacture Year 2015
Big changes after that in MY16 and claims of 15% increase in output, and now claiming an extra 10% for 2020 with new concave under separator.

bulls**t?

We have no problem with threshing or sieve losses always walker loss so if they can separate more before the walkers then in theory it should be possible.
This years straw did test that theory though.

 

[darrenjlobb]

Newer style concave looks alot simpler overall without the removal-able / bolt in cast items. However for modifying them might be handy the fact they unbolt. Think I am tempted to cut out every other finger on the last 2/4 rows of the rear separator grate... hard to know if last few or first few or middle few is best, but if deere put the flap ones at the rear there must have been a reason i guess.

 

[darrenjlobb]

The gap on ours is 25mm but the new one is plus 14% so must be around 28.5mm.
However we have 11 gaps with 10 wires over 355mm ish hard to be exact
11 gaps 275mm makes the wires 8mm
7 wires on new one so 56mm. So 299 divided by 8 gaps 37mm

The picture of the new one looks more like 37 than 28

Just measured the gaps between fingers on mine, 14mm.....if i remove every other one, would leave 37mm...any thoughts?

Obviously its an un-even number of fingers, so would end up with two one end, but would just rotate which end i start from and rotate them in a row in the concave...

 

[homefarm]

After I realized the Axial Flow was a maize/soya bean harvester made to work in the US, I became much more confident in altering things to suit my UK conditions. Case admitted no R+D was done here.

UK conditions are different to most places these combines are designed for. They also must have the ability to harvest the wide range of crops grown around the world.

The lever I mistakenly altered is for maize and rape but seemed to help this year in wheat, I would guess for just wheat and barley you would get away with very large gaps

 

[darrenjlobb]

How many curtains are in the back of yours above the walkers? and in what position? Found this had large effect on my old W machine putting a stiffer curtain in and further forward.