Twin rotor innovation changed the way farmers threshed grain

DECATUR, Ill. — New Holland celebrated 50 years of harvesting innovation that changed the way farmers threshed grain during the Farm Progress Show.

“The twin rotor technology is our proprietary grain cleaning and threshing system that was first launched by New Holland in 1975 with the TR70 line,” said Ryan Schaefer, vice president of New Holland North America.

“Since 1975, there have been over 70,000 yellow combines roll off the assembly line with the twin rotor harvesting system at their heart, which has been revolutionary for farmers,” he said.

“In the five decades that have passed since then, it has become an industry standard for grain harvesting efficiency and quality.”

Although the TR70 was launched in 1975, Schaefer said, the story actually started about a decade before that.

“In 1964, New Holland acquired Leon Claeys company in Belgium that had launched the first self-propelled combine in 1952,” the executive said.

“After that acquisition, New Holland engineers continued to refine Claeys’ conventional straw walker system while pursuing an innovative new design that would make the most of physics,” he said.

At this time, farmers were transitioning from producing grain for livestock on their own farms to producing commodity grain for export, as well as growing food-grade crops where quality is important.

“Food processors didn’t want cracked kernels or a lot of trash and material other than grain,” Schaefer said. “So, farmers were looking for new ways and technologies that would help them, beyond just setting the machine or operating more slowly, and that’s just what new Holland delivered with the twin rotor technology.”

The New Holland engineers discovered they could deliver high grain quality through using physics rather than actual physical contact with the grain.

“Utilizing twin rotors mounted side by side, that use centrifugal force to throw the grain out faster than the chaff was moving, that was really revolutionary,” Schaefer said.

A TR70 combine, on loan from a farmer, was on display at the show. It was a 168-horsepower model with a grain tank that holds 158 bushels.

“For comparison, the New Holland CR11 has 775 horsepower and a 567-bushel grain tank,” Schaefer said. “So, over the last 50 years, we have a cleaning shoe that is three times bigger, an engine that is producing almost five times more horsepower, a 360% improvement in grain handling capacity and twin rotor technology that is at the heart of every CR machine.”

The width of the feeder house on the TR70 is the same width as the rotors, said Cole Sanford, cash crop specialist for New Holland North America.

“That was one of the keys to success they found in total throughput for the machine which set it apart from the conventional combines,” he said.

The TR70 has twin 17-inch rotors that are 88 inches long.

“Now we’re at 24-inch-diameter rotors that are 142 inches long,” Sanford said.

“This TR70 has a hopper topper which was a factory option that pushed it to 190-bushel capacity and the unload rate was about 1.5 bushels per second,” he said. “The residue spread is about 15- to 20-foot wide and now on the new machines we can go up to 61-foot-spread width.”

As engineers worked to develop the New Holland CR10 and CR11 combines, it wasn’t enough to just produce a bigger machine, said Curtis Hillen, cash crop segment lead for New Holland North America.

“The total cost of harvest went into every design decision we made,” Hillen said.

There are four pillars to New Holland’s total cost of production.

“Productivity is the first pillar, so the combine needs to do more acres per hour, and the second pillar is to maximize grain savings, because it is not good enough to just go faster — we want to drive those losses down,” Hillen said.

The third pillar is residue management.

“As we get to wider headers, it becomes more important that we do a really good job of sizing and spreading that residue out uniformly on the field,” Hillen said.

“The fourth pillar is uptime and the way the engine draws clean air from above. That helps to maximize uptime and get the most harvesting hours in a day.”

“The width of the feeder house of the CR11 combine is the same width as the twin rotors, identical to what we did back in 1975,” Sanford added. “The feeder house is all-new design to capture all the material.”

The dynamic feed roll does two things — it’s a rock trap and it also propels material through the rotor.

“They found that it is important for the speed of the DFR rotating to match the rotors,” Sanford said, “because there was an improvement in crop quality by doing that.”

The cleaning shoe of the TR70 utilized a grain pan and a sieve set.

“The CR11 utilizes a grain pan and four sieve sets — there’s two top sieves and two bottom sieves,” Sanford said. “We can shift the grain pan or the top sieve set to the left or right based on the slope or crop distribution.”

There are four pressure sensors on the CR11.

“We can tell if the material is heavy on the left or right based on slopes up to 28%,” Sanford said. “Or, maybe it knows we’re taking half of a header so it can shake in the opposite direction to try to level that out.”

The grain pan can shake independently of the top sieve.

“So, we can shake them both or one or the other,” Sanford said. “The machine has a mind of its own, so all we do is drive and the automation does the work for us.”

Operators can unload the 567-bushel grain tank on the CR11 in about 94 seconds.

“This model is equipped with the ability to split that rate, so you can go from a 6-bushel per second rate to a lower rate to top off the grain cart,” Sanford said.

“Next year’s crop starts with the residue management,” he said. “We have to be able to spread the residue, especially for our no-till farmers.”

The IntelliSpread system on the combine looks for standing crop and residue coming out of the machine.

“Then it decides to increase or decrease the impellers all independently on its own,” Sanford said. “We need to spread 60-foot wide, have an even distribution and spread directly behind the machine.”