Future of Gleaner

What is the status of Gleaner? 

The Gleaner line (as I see it) will never be more than a Class 8 machine with the current overall transverse rotor width design. There have been rumors that a big change was coming to alter the design, but with new combine sales lagging industry wide, there might be a delay. As it stands, you want bigger?? you purchase the Fendt Ideal combine. You want smaller?? you buy a Gleaner.

The Super series will get some new upgrades.  Possibley the T series. This was posted on one of the Gleaner sites. As to the future, there are some changes possible to increase the capacity a tad more that are rumored.  the cage/cylinder was increased in size once... to do it again would require streacccching it some.. just rumors... :-) 

Edited by tbran - 22 Jan 2024 at 6:18pm

What I find interesting is the nexat appears to use the natural flow concept but nobody is talking about it

I have no intention of switching to Fendt, or Claas, or New Holland, or any other twin rotor design. The amount of stuff on those machines is a bit concerning at the least. I did take a close look at them last year and was not impressed at all way too much going on and surprisingly built much lighter than I expected. I suppose that is to reduce weight but it didn't look good. My vision for a larger Gleaner would be a centered feeder house with a single chain feeding a conventional cylinder. Behind that a single transverse rotor splitting the crop flow with a discharge on both sides of the combine. Keep the accelerator rolls and use some variations of the v cooling system that was used on the massey combines to deal with the fact that the engine would be boxed in on both ends. The unloading auger also needs some attention, it's way too short/low for most guys. As it is it doesn't even clear the cab of some grain cart tractors. I know that anything to do with substantially increasing capacity will also increase complexity and weight but Gleaner is not going to maintain/grow market share without making changes. Maybe this idea has already been tried and not worked but....

DrAllis wrote: The Gleaner "size" problem is you can only transport or ship things that are so wide down the road or in a shipping container. This hampers the overall rotor length and keeps it (thus far) at 90 inches, where lengthwise/axial rotors are 10 to 16 feet long. Then remember, the feederhouse needs to be wider for more capacity and with it being offset to the right, is limited (maxxed out now) because of the right drive tires. Soooo, the drive tires would have to be moved out and that causes tread spacing/row spacing issues.

Could you gain capacity by increasing rotor diameter?   Could always add length to a machine.

I am not sure if increasing rotor diameter without increasing length would be possible without an increase in rotor loss. That was why I was thinking of a conventional cylinder first to give it an extra thresh and allow more of the rotor for separation. The biggest problem with the feeder house is in the transition area between the two chains, if that could be eliminated it would easily increase the feeder house capacity. I have only ever plugged it up in the transition area and only when coming out of a kochia patch back into good crop. The kochi makes everything gummy and when dry crop enters after it balls up between the chains. The current setup could definitely be tweaked some more to get a decent increase in capacity without a completely new model but I think the 7cyl engine is maxed out. Can easily load the S98 to 100% engine load in wheat, barley, canola and corn. In corn with a 12 row chopping head horse power is definitely the limiting factor. A bigger engine that wouldn't be working as hard should last longer and use less fuel. Also might reduce def usage which is over a gallon an hour at times. A larger clean grain elevator is also required as it can be overwhelmed in 25% corn if you push too hard. Lots of little things could be changed to make it not only bigger but also better.

I think you make some good points jvin248. The large farms are well covered by large machines. The problem as I see it is that it may not be cost effective or possible to run one to 5000hrs and still maintain capacity. That means trading more often and that results in more used machines that have to go somewhere. That is what I think is stopping companies from building smaller ones. If I had a small farm I would rather buy a used large one and combine for a couple days than a small new one and spend the next two weeks doing the same job. The cost of the machine would likely be similar and with putting very few hours on a used machine it should last a long time. We rarely run two combines at the same time we just don't have enough people to do it. We do have some old machines sitting in the barn as backups just incase though. Actually had to use dad's old N5 a few years ago when our Challenger burned down. Did 60k bu of corn with it and it hadn't been used in 9 years prior to that. The only issue with it was the unloading auger. The combine has nearly 5000 hrs on it and still has the original auger and the tube and swivel are pretty much done.