When Massey Ferguson engineers started work on their model 9000 Advanced Technology Rotor, or ATR, the challenge was to design a new combine with the unlikely combination of versatility and good straw while keeping the proven efficiency of rotary separation.
They met the challenge with a unique system that allows an operator to make major modifications to the rotor configuration in the field in 30 minutes or less.
Introduced to the Canadian Prairies in 2002, the 9690 class 6 and 9790 class 7 ATR combines have a 300 bushel bin and a relatively low weight of 24,750 pounds.
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The 9000 ATR is not for every farmer. It is specifically tailored for producers who require long straw for baling, but also want the proven grain harvest benefits of a rotary.
It is also aimed at areas with diverse crops, where producers want a single combine that can do a good job in several crops.
“Especially in areas like this, the adjustments will be used quite a lot,” said Ben Friesen, the Agco dealer at Morden, in southern Manitoba.
“We grow so many different specialty crops around here, more than wheat and canola. We’ve got edible beans, corn, sunflowers, plus all the other crops.”
With that many crops to handle, either of the two traditional harvest options has been costly. A farmer can set up different types of combines for different crops, or compromise and buy a single combine that does an OK job on all crops.
“That’s what we’ve had until these ATR combines came out. Usually, a guy would have one combine that would just do an adequate job, a passable job, on all his crops. But it wouldn’t do a really proper job on any of them.
“The idea behind the 9000 is to have just one good combine that lets you quickly make some major adjustments to your rotor so it does a proper job on every crop you grow. It’s not a compromise combine.”
The key to making the ATR perform in a variety of conditions, according to Massey combine engineer Tony Hendrix, is to make the rotor itself easily accessible to the operator.
It’s a half-hour job to open up the chamber and reconfigure the rotor for less aggressive or more aggressive action. Threshing elements, knives and rasp bars have all been designed and built around the concept of quick change in the field.
If the operator wants long straw, the straw chopper is mounted on a set of rails, so it’s only a three minute job to disconnect the belt and crank it totally out of the way. The straw then comes off the tail end of the rotor and falls unimpeded to the ground.
“Pretty well every customer we have uses the adjustments,” said Hendrix. “That’s why they bought it. We designed it to be a high performance combine in all types of crops and harvest conditions.
“You get into beans, and you start with only a couple knives. If you need to chop a little more to get better processing, you stop and add some knives.
“We have a section on the cylinder that lets you reverse the cylinder bar to slow the crop down. Then you get into corn later that day, and it’s flowing nice for you, so you put all the forward bars in and take out all the knives so you get the complete cob through. You can pick any rotor combination you can think of, and you make the changes fast. It gives you high performance in any condition.”
For farmers concerned about straw quality, the ATR rotor has another benefit as standard equipment. Massey calls the rotor “direct discharge.” It does not have a rear beater.
“You can get long, high quality straw,” Hendrix said. “You can remove all the knives and then crank the chopper back out of the way. Now you’ve got straight straw coming off the tail end of the direct discharge rotor. It falls right to the ground. Nothing in the way. Very easy to bale.”
That flexibility is good for producers who bale straw for sale to an ethanol or strawboard plant, or who use the straw in their own cattle operations, said Bruce Lund, an Agco dealer northwest of Winnipeg.
“Some guys will change the knives to slow down the material going through the combine. But, last year we had really wet, heavy conditions around here. Guys were straight cutting in standing water, so some of them added knives to push the material through faster with less plugging. You can do all kinds of different things with that rotor.”
Lund said the dedicated hydrostatic pump drives the rotor at a constant speed, without rpm fluctuation, regardless of engine speed, ground speed or crop flow.
This standard equipment feature lets the operator optimize threshing and separation for the best grain harvest, and still treat the crop residue gently so it can be baled later.
Conversely, the residue can be chopped fine to suit the requirements of farmers who do zero till and direct seeding.
“The hydrostatic drive gives us an easy reverse, so it’s very quick to deal with plugs in tough harvest conditions,” Lund said.
The weight of the combine is another thing farmers seem to like. We had a 9790 out for field demos last fall in that bad mud, and it stayed up very well. It’s not a heavy combine compared to some of the newer combines in these classes.
“There are a couple producers near here who put their 9790s on duals last fall, and that kept them going in the mud. That’s a lot cheaper than rear-wheel assist or tracks.”
The Massey dual wheel kit sells for $4,400.
The rear drive kit for a MF 9000 combine sells for $16,800, which is about the same price as a rear drive kit for any other brand of combine. Depending on model and options, a person can expect to pay about $300,000 for a new MF 9000 ATR combine.
