What's that rotating thing on the front of a combine harvester for?

I mean I can see it’s whirling around helping to gather in the wheat, but it seems fairly ineffectual. It has those dangly wires on it, why would they be there? Seems odd.

Any agricultural engineers on?

Is it a comb to make the er… stuff… be in a straight line to be harvested?

My agricultural knowledge is possibly limited.

For mashing tings up, innit?

It drags the stalks up to the cutting bar and keeps them in place. The cutting bar is like a giant one sided hedge trimmer. Without it you’d just flatten the crop.

It also varies by crop – sweetcorn / maize ones are rather different.

See?
It’s like a comb but for fields.

It’s cutting and then picking up gently. You don’t want to trash the wheat or knock all the seeds/grain out too soon.

Think of sickle cutting but mechanised and on a huge scale and picking up as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combine_harvester

as tron says, the header tines keep the stand upright (by pulling the ear towards the machine in at the same speed as the cutting bar is approaching the bottom of the stalk) so that the cutting bar can cut straight into the stalk. Without it, the cutting bar would just push the stand over.

They gather up the crop and feed it into the harvester.
If the crop is anything but straight up, the blades that run 5-6 inches above the ground would push it flat and not gather it.
They feed the crop across the blades.
The whole crop is taken by conveyor into the drum. In here the “ears” or corn is separated.
The crop is sorted into a hopper, the length of the crop gets dumped out if the back.
This will be dried and baled.

The head has three bits – the rotating bit (reel) bends the crop in towards a cutter bar, which er cuts the crop. Behind that you’ve got an auger which pulls the cut crop into the main bit of the combine where it’s separated into the useful stuff and waste by a series of sieves.

Jesus, you guys are quick!
There was nothing when I started typing, half a dozen by the time I finished!

Pfft. Ignore them lot ^. It’s clearly there to combine the harvest, clues in the name 😉

so how many “pilots” in here tonight then? 😉

They were harvesting the maize outside my house last week, just as it was getting dusk.
The local contractor turned up in the mother of all Claas Lexions. Great big tracked beast.
Took the step-daughter up to watch them do a few runs, she was momentarily impressed when I told here that’s what I used to do.
Only briefly though 😕

maize is harvested differently IIRC

its a fodder crop, so they use a thing with big gathering discs on the side to take the whole lot in as well as the header.

see photo 12 here
http://www.midsuffolkagriphotos.co.uk/gallery/gp157.htm

Actually I’ve bin promised a go driving a Combine Arvester at a farm in Frinton, Essex. Must sort that out.

‘Has a Harvester ever bin to you before?’

This is apparently very big in Holland….

… this is the Formula 1 version:

I think they can do it a couple of ways, they can use a combine with a different header or a bigger forage harvester. Like they use on Miscanthus.
Think it depends on what your end use is.
It was a while ago, and we never really had Maize! 😆

never harvested it myself either. But the other night there was one working near here, hell of a noise, and I passed it in the lane. Looked AWESOME!

Nonsense.

Those swivelling tines are actually there because THRUSH needed them to intimidate UNCLE agents Solo and Kuryakin when they were trying to lie low in a bog in the middle of a wheat field.

And also to pick up the impacted monocotyledons from the crop circle patterns made by alien spacecraft, in preparation for those probings that they go in for.

Fact.

I caught THRUSH in a stubble field once. Wasnt pretty.

If the crop is anything but straight up, the blades that run 5-6 inches above the ground would push it flat and not gather it.
They feed the crop across the blades

Ah yes.. that makes good sense.. and other pepole’s too. Thanks STW 🙂

I had Oral Thrush once. Sorted it with some natural yoghurt. Cleared up within a couple of days.

I harvested a field of soya beans in Missouri once, it was ace. Country music on the radio, Mountain Dew in the cooler, magical.

Gert orf moi laaaannd