Do you want to get the best performance out of your STS or S-Series combine in corn this year and reduce shelling before it reaches the rotor? The first thing to check is that your feeder house drum is up and the feeder house chain is on the slow speed. This will reduce shelling in the feeder house. Next is to make sure that the feed accelerator is on the slow side. One thing that helps a lot is changing out the feed accelerator paddles to a smooth paddle. Combines come from the factory with serrated paddles. Changing them out can take some time, but it is well worth it in the long run. If you still have issues at the feed accelerator, take the smooth paddles to a machine shop and put a 30 degree bend in them, bend them back, that makes them less aggressive. You just want to “shovel” the corn into the rotor.
Next, make sure the concaves are level. Leveling the concaves reduces loading to one side. To do this, you want to read your operators manual and make sure to follow it step by step. When setting the concave clearance, take a ear and shell the corn off the cob, then take the cob and push it through the box end on a metric wrench. If the cob doesn’t slide through a 19mm wrench, but does slide through a 20mm wrench, set the concave to 20-22mm. This will get the cob clean of corn and reduce cob damage and then keep the cob out of the grain tank. Next you want to make sure you have a spacer in the rear grates. This allows the corn, cobs, and stalks to be thrown around more to get all the loose corn out of the rotor.
Next are the chaffer and sieve. In your combine armrest display you want to go to the calibrations page and do a calibration of the chaffer and sieve. This will make sure that if you set the chaffer at 20mm it is 20mm and not 25mm. These are just a few tips and tricks for this season. If you have any questions please call the Sloan Support Call Center at 217-693-6209 and talk to one of the Sloan product support specialists.
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