In-line small square balers

[jwcinpk]

Bear in mind all my experience is with older balers, but I have seen perfectly clean, equally adjusted balers spit out them there banana bales every other one in an equal windrow. What would cause that?

 

[RickB]

Bear in mind all my experience is with older balers, but I have seen perfectly clean, equally adjusted balers spit out them there banana bales every other one in an equal windrow. What would cause that?

Banana bales are caused by the feeding system not delivering consistent amounts of hay to each side of the bale chamber, or the bale case wedges (restrictors) not installed in a manner to match the feeding rate/adjustment. Feeder adjustments may well have to match windrow size, ground speed, and PTO speed. Adjusting these factors to make bales with a consistent plunger stroke count works very well to ensure consistent bale size/shape. Any baler operator's manual will cover bale shape concerns, and just about any baler can be repaired/ adjusted/operated in a manner that will produce well shaped bales.

 

[mark.r]

NH479 9' mower, JD14T baler with plastic.

Double windrow, bale in 1st gear 2nd range.

Nice! Not to get to far OT, how does that 1070 handle that NH haybine?

 

[slowzuki]

I have done all the inspections and adjustments. I replaced the bale trays bolts with carriage bolts because I thought the heads were dragging and messing the tension.

On the JD's the later 336's came with a 5 position fork, mine has the older 3 position. I have the fork in the position to feed to the farthest side of the bale chamber, the other settings make it worse.

Feeding it slower lets the precompression of the screw send hay further into the chamber and gives more strokes per bale, both make more uniform bales.

As a note, often even my bales that look square, the far side is not as tight as the side close to the knife.

On The Farm… » Blog Archive » Haying in Atlantic Canada Some pictures of my setup.

I can't believe all the fear about 'banana' bales. You should empty out the bale chamber and inspect all the hay restrictors and dogs that form the bale. You will find dirt, stones, a poultice of hay chaff, mold, rusted through ramps and misadjusted tension springs. Clean the chamber out and sharpen the knives while you are at it. The feed rate has nothing to do with a misformed bale. Lastly, check the tension of the twine as it comes out of the twine box. If its too loose or tight on one side, it contributes to the internal compression uniformity in the bale. If nothing else, count the threads on the hay restrictors at the back of the baler. If you have a lot of difference between them, that won't compensate for other asymmetries in the holdback process.

 

[jimg]

Whats the purpose of the 'pole' right above the drive line on the baler?

Does your tedder have 2 positions for the drive line...from the pic it looks like a stub to the left of where the drive line is attached.

A 'belt' tedder is an inverter?

 

[mark.r]

Neat blog, thanks for posting. Another haybine user I see.

 

[cwilson]

I do not own one of these but i do buy my hay in the small bales and they pack and hold together way better

 

[Robert_in_NY]

I do not own one of these but i do buy my hay in the small bales and they pack and hold together way better

I have not seen a bale in person out of the back of the inline but any of the current balers will make a tight, heavy square bale if the operator wants too. I had to lighten my bales up because my customers complained about the weight. To do that all I had to do is loosen the tension some as I wanted to keep a 36" bale length for stacking reason. So by letting off the tension the bale is now a little looser but it is because I want it that way. My customers prefer a 40 pound small square bale and it doesn't take much for me to crank the tension down and put out 50-55 pound bales with no other changes. To go heavier I would need to change twine and I do not like using 9000 sisal twine on 55 pound bales so it is my limit right now without changing anything but tension.

My friends John Deere would put ont some very tight, square bales in the 60 + pound range but he was using poly twine. The problems with these tight, dense bales is that it is hard to grab strings. But they are great if you are shipping them.

 

[wolc123]

The lighter, loose bales seem like a great idea to get more $/acre, especially if the customers like them better and you can use cheaper twine and probably less hp and fuel (a win-win deal). That just might be the ticket to make selling hay profitable enough for me to think about getting back into it.

 

[Robert_in_NY]

The lighter, loose bales seem like a great idea to get more $/acre, especially if the customers like them better and you can use cheaper twine and probably less hp and fuel (a win-win deal). That just might be the ticket to make selling hay profitable enough for me to think about getting back into it.

Find out what your prospective customers want first. If they want heavy bales you need to plan your operation around that. I started out with heavier bales till my customers started requesting lighter bales. 40 pound bales seem to keep most of them happy. Some want even lighter.