Easy mounting | Unit guides stalks to cutter bar and directs cobs to auger
Dave Dietrich watched from his vantage point in southern Saskatchewan as corn crept north across the U.S. border.
The farm equipment builder, who runs Flexxifinger in Assiniboia, felt he could give western Canadian producers a way to harvest the crop without investing in a new, specialty combine header.
“We already knew how to lift crops up and get them into the combine,” he said.
“Sorting them left and right and getting them to the (cutter bar) is a natural extension of that.”
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Extra effort is required to efficiently cut corn stalks, which relies on pressure from the crop’s mass.
Ron Wheeler of Flexxifinger said the company experimented with a few concepts, but it pretty much knew what the tool should do and built it to be compatible with its quick detaching lifter system.
“We built mild steel pans that draw the corn into the header. The same knives that were cutting wheat or lentils a few hours before are now cutting corn,” he said.
“It’s not dependent on a row spacing either, unlike a dedicated corn header.”
Flexxifinger took its invention to a large, international farm show in Kansas City this spring, where the U.S. Custom Harvesters association was meeting.
“We’ve got a lot of those folks looking at our corn harvest pans,” Wheeler said.
“These folks have a lot of gear to truck around depending on what crops they’re taking. It might be an option for some of them.”
Texas custom harvester Ed Pipwell said Flexxifinger’s units would be attractive to farmers and commercial operators, as long as they are tough enough.
“It’s a good looking product and a lot cheaper than a (corn) header,” he said. “Easy to change out with that mount. There’s lots of times when you only need 500 or 1,000 acres of corn before you go back to something else. Heck, maybe this is what you use on all your corn.”
Dietrich designed the corn pans to fit most three-inch knife spaced grain headers. The units guide corn stalks to the cutter bar and ensure the cobs and upper stalks make it into the table auger or onto the canvas.
At $295 per pan, the system costs far less than comparable corn header.
For more information, visit www.flexxifinger.com.
