NEW ORLEANS, La. — A new player has joined the pliability field at harvest time.
European farm equipment maker Geringhoff’s operation at St. Cloud, Minnesota, is building its latest farm machinery tools in North America, including the company’s first flex header.
Flexible headers have been scraping pulse crop and soybean fields since the 1970s, but despite their utility, the added cost and weight made them a second choice for producers looking to harvest cereals, unless they needed them to get some of that low hanging fruit.
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The units often paid off in short order with the close shave they delivered to the ground and by freeing up cropping choices for growers.
Draper headers have added gentle handling and high capacity over large widths. Combining the two takes creative engineering, Erik Quanbeck of Geringhoff said about the five years it took to bring one to market.
“We scrapped the first two designs. We met with a lot of farmers to find out what they liked or didn’t like about the competition’s machines,” he said.
“We wanted to keep the weight low. The ability to manage very wide widths and shave the ground clean.”
The end result, the new Truflex Razor header, would also need to handle the smallest lentil crops and the large, upright soybean crops of the U.S. Midwest.
A three section, hinged frame allows the outer wings to move up and down in a 24 inch range at the ends of the header. The central, hydraulically driven cutter bar chases these movements.
Not having drives at the ends of the wings allows the Razor to have four-inch-wide crop dividers.
A controller automatically looks after the cutter bar and header height movement, but each of the two outboard wings have hydraulically managed wheels that take those directions.
The operator can lift or lower either side manually during operation. This lifting allows for a partial pass to be made at the end of a field or final passes without locking up the side without crop.
The lightweight header uses a Geringhoff-designed three-piece reel, which features teardrop bats reminiscent of those on the older New Holland and Deere headers from the 1980s and 1990s.
“We looked at pulse crops and beans that need that gentle push without wrapping up,” said.
It can be a challenge to keep seed on a header, especially at the front of a draper, but the company has designed an air fed system that blows seeds back, onto the belts.
“It’s an option that producers will find pays off pretty fast,” said Quanbeck.
“We found a lot of growers adding air reels to their headers. This one flexes right along with the knife.”
A fan blows the air through the large tube frame to pipes that run in the middle of the canvases to the hollow, knife-support tube and roller mounts.
Air flows out through the back of the rock guard behind the knife and blows seeds toward the middle of the belts.
Small seeds, such as canola and flax, could also take advantage of this design when the table is locked up.
The company says it hasn’t been doing a lot of work with those crops at this point, but it has widely tested it in cereals.
It is available in 35 and 40 foot widths, but Geringhoff has plans for a later release of larger and smaller models.
“We will build them for North America and international markets in St. Cloud,” said Quanbeck, who can be reached at eluanbeck@geringhoff.com or 315-730-6033.
