Older combine operators couldn’t unplug their combines by themselves. The answer? An electric winch
Last year’s harvest was a tough one for the Miller farm west of Acme, Alta.
The solution was electric.
An early snow had downed crops, and combines struggled to process the crop without plugging.
“I recall in 2014 fall there was a point where we had all three machines plugged up at once and we called for some help and the youngest brother, Mike, said, ‘take a number, boys,’ ” said Annon Hovde, who operates a combine for the farm.
To make things worse, Hovde and the other combine operators hired during harvest are older and were often unable to unplug the combines themselves.
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This meant that when one of the combines plugged up, the operator of another machine had to stop to lend a hand.
“The minute you stop one extra person out there to unplug a combine, that bottlenecks the whole show. Like, those grain carts need to keep flying out there,” said Doug Miller.
“You have three 70-year-olds watching a 25-year-old pulling the wrench back. I’m exaggerating that a little bit, but I’m not exaggerating that too far.”
Hovde decided to look for an easier way to deal with the plug-ups.
His solution was to install an electric winch from his car trailer underneath the combine’s cab and entrance platform. The winch cable would hang down and attach to a loop welded on the bar that is used to turn and unplug the cylinder.
Miller liked the idea and helped mount the winch, ran heavy-duty wire to the combine’s batteries and installed a circuit breaker in the electric system.
The Millers run three New Holland CX8080s and decided to buy a couple more winches to install on the other two machines once the first one was outfitted.
“Before, a lot of times one guy couldn’t unplug the combines,” Miller said.
“They just weren’t physically strong enough to pull the cylinder back. One guy would lay on his back and push with his feet, and another guy would pull and we had a snipe, and maybe 20 minutes or a half hour later we would have it all cleaned out because you can only pull so much. Now we plug and we might be down 10 or 15 minutes, and only with one guy.”
The winch allows operators to back up the cylinder without straining themselves, and the crop residue lump that’s causing the grief can then easily be pulled out of the stone trap
The farm’s first winch had 3500 pounds of capability, but Miller said the 2000 lb. winches they bought later have plenty of power to deal with most situations.
He’s also not worried that they will damage the combines.
“The only thing you’re going to do is bend the wrench,” he said.
“You can’t do any damage to the combine, even with the high-powered winch. If you get too carried away you’re just going to bend the wrench. It was plugged one time pretty tight and the wrench turned and the belts slipped. So you can’t really damage anything.”
This year the Millers received 125 millimetres of rain in September, and they again dealt with tough harvesting conditions. The winches were put to the test and held up, saving time and back strain for the harvesting crew.
Miller said it’s unfortunate combines don’t come with a clean out setting where the concaves and back beaters would drop further out of the way so that the combines could clean themselves out without operators having to pull out the wrench. He said this would make it easier for older people to operate the machines.
“It frustrates me that they build these great machines, but they don’t always build them user friendly for the guys that are running them. And we’re finding that we have an older generation of guys running our equipment who are phenomenal operators, but at 70 some years old you can just keep running up that stairway unplugging combines all day.”
Contact robin.booker@producer.com
