I bought this about six weeks ago, used, from another organic farmer after seeing several pictures and being told it was "field ready". I thought I'd have to do some work on it to get it usable, but I've basically had to rebuild the whole thing - pulleys, belts, electrical, screens, bearings, auger, motors(??, not sure about them yet). I'm still waiting on a few parts to make it operable.
I plan on using this to clean out weed seeds from my soybeans. Rather than blowing them out the back of the combine, I'd set the combine to collect everything the size of the soybeans and smaller; this double rotating cleaner would then let me sort out the beans from the other small weed seeds, preventing them from going back on the field where they would germinate next spring. This involves quite a bit more work post combining but is a result of a series of events earlier in the year that led to me having so many weeds in my beans.
Unfortunately, the cleaner won't be ready. Neither, at least in time for the beans, will the grain bin - I'm still waiting on the electrician to run his underground lines over to the bin motors.
Is it worth it? Well, I need one. They sell for $7500, used, at dealers. I paid $2500 for this and will have another $2000 in it when all is said and done. Plus a lot of my time. I need it to be reliable and in good working order, as I'll be putting $100,000+ of beans through it every year.
Before:
After - almost done:
I've had to get clever to get some of these tensioning springs installed:
before -
After -
plus a new Lundell Plastics poly cup loading auger. It was hard to get the two 6 foot sections to line up so I could bolt them together. Eventually I got it done.
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