Development of Axial Flow Combine

[dale560]

Picture is nostalgic. We ran a 20 ft set of Bonco pans on a local mfg quicktach setup took about an hour and half to switch header between sunflowers and grain. The Sund pickup was made in Newburg nd and the Bonco pans in Jamestown ND. The 1480 we had was a custom machine as most were in the early days. The 1480s were considered to big for avg farm here.

[acem]

So many farmers and AG businesses went out in the 80s.

Dad got us by bye the skin of our teeth.

I don't think we would have made it if we hadn't grown rice. 

[acem]

Here's a couple factory videos on setting up the Axial flows up to harvest wheat and corn.

 

 

[SDman]

6 hours ago, dale560 said:

Picture is nostalgic. We ran a 20 ft set of Bonco pans on a local mfg quicktach setup took about an hour and half to switch header between sunflowers and grain. The Sund pickup was made in Newburg nd and the Bonco pans in Jamestown ND. The 1480 we had was a custom machine as most were in the early days. The 1480s were considered to big for avg farm here.

I remember some Bonco pans around here in the 1980s, too, although I would say at that time that most sunflowers were harvested here with John Deere All-Crop heads being adapted to just about every brand of combine you could think of. Seemed like guys would go into the Corn Belt and buy All-Crop heads pretty cheap as they were falling out of favor for flexheads, bring them back here, and run them for a few more years.

As far as the Sund pickups, there were some of them around here, but I would say Melroe pickups were the most common brand. Seemed like just about every dealership sold Melroe, no matter what color/brand of combines they sold. For those of you not familiar with Melroe, they are more commonly known as being the parent company for Bobcat skidsteers, made in Gwinner, ND.

 

6 hours ago, acem said:

So many farmers and AG businesses went out in the 80s.

Dad got us by bye the skin of our teeth.

I don't think we would have made it if we hadn't grown rice. 

Yes, it was a terrible time in US agriculture. For some reason or another , my Dad got into the hog business in the 1970s. Like them or not, if it wasn't for the hogs, I'm sure Dad would not have survived the 1980s, either. 

Still can't hardly stand to look at the sight of a pig to this day.....nearly 35 years later. 

[dale560]

37 minutes ago, SDman said:

I remember some Bonco pans around here in the 1980s, too, although I would say at that time that most sunflowers were harvested here with John Deere All-Crop heads being adapted to just about every brand of combine you could think of. Seemed like guys would go into the Corn Belt and buy All-Crop heads pretty cheap as they were falling out of favor for flexheads, bring them back here, and run them for a few more years.

As far as the Sund pickups, there were some of them around here, but I would say Melroe pickups were the most common brand. Seemed like just about every dealership sold Melroe, no matter what color/brand of combines they sold. For those of you not familiar with Melroe, they are more commonly known as being the parent company for Bobcat skidsteers, made in Gwinner, ND.

 

Yes, it was a terrible time in US agriculture. For some reason or another , my Dad got into the hog business in the 1970s. Like them or not, if it wasn't for the hogs, I'm sure Dad would not have survived the 1980s, either. 

Still can't hardly stand to look at the sight of a pig to this day.....nearly 35 years later. 

Dad was farming 4000 acres of crop or a bit more in the early 80s rapidly expanded in the 70s. It was a big downturn. One of the things for a few years that kept the downsized operation going was pigs, sold a 100 or 200 butcher hogs a year for 100 bucks or around there but in the late 80s a thousand dollars was still a lot of money. We also custom swathed, harvested for neighbors and got into full time repair also. He actually had a little spending money in a couple years

[Drysleeves]

On 11/9/2024 at 10:41 PM, acem said:

Found some pics online.

 

 

In the framed pic the two combines on the left have a 208" unloading tube with wraparound rubber flap while the other 3 have a 172" with the funnel to extend the reach.

[SDman]

Here's one of the reasons I got busy lately....we sold our first 715 Quadtrac last week. Sold it to a primarily Deere operation, although this would be their 4th Quadtrac they have bought from us. They wanted to try out a 715 as they bought a big ripper that their 2 big Quads(one being a 620 AFS Connect, the other a 9R 640 Deere) struggled with. They're also a little upset with Deere as the 640 has damage on all of the tracks, and Deere says they will not help out on any warranty for the tracks. We delivered the Quadtrac last Thursday for a demo.....they decided to purchase the 715 on Friday morning. They were impressed with it, to say the least. 

[acem]

7 minutes ago, SDman said:

Here's one of the reasons I got busy lately....we sold our first 715 Quadtrac last week. Sold it to a primarily Deere operation, although this would be their 4th Quadtrac they have bought from us. They wanted to try out a 715 as they bought a big ripper that their 2 big Quads(one being a 620 AFS Connect, the other a 9R 640 Deere) struggled with. They're also a little upset with Deere as the 640 has damage on all of the tracks, and Deere says they will not help out on any warranty for the tracks. We delivered the Quadtrac last Thursday for a demo.....they decided to purchase the 715 on Friday morning. They were impressed with it, to say the least. 

Quite a tractor there!

Thanks for your input!

[acem]

25 minutes ago, Drysleeves said:

In the framed pic the two combines on the left have a 208" unloading tube with wraparound rubber flap while the other 3 have a 172" with the funnel to extend the reach.

I forget where I found those pics on the web. They were custom cutters but not Hayes.

I think they it was taken in the 90s if I remember correctly.  They have 1010 headers also.

Back when I was looking for an Axial Flow back in the late 90s, I was told to avoid 1480s.  They are good machines but at the time when they were new they were too big for most farmers.  Most were sold new to custom harvesters or very large farms and saw alot more use than 1460s and smaller machines.  By the time the 1680 came out, most rice farmers bought 1680s instead of 1660.  They found in rice the 80 size rotor had much more threshing capacity and was much less likely to plug than the smaller 60 size rotor, even with the bigger engine in the 1660.

Here's another pic of some later custom harvesters using 1480s. 

[Drysleeves]

I don't think the 208" tube was available on the early production 1480's. Clean grain elevator capacity was an issue almost from the outset in the higher yield corn of the day.

[acem]

Here are a few pics of early prototypes from a thread here at redpower.

They all appear to discharge out the side instead of the rear.

 

[utility 64]

Abandoned CX 11 dual rotor prototype.
Thanks for opening this topic for these combine harvesters that revolutionized the world of harvesting 😍.
The Axial Flow is a timeless machine.
I think the engineers of the time were far from thinking that a new generation of Axial Flow would come out 47 years later 🥰.
Bravo to these pioneers 👍.

[acem]

1480 'Header' in Australia with a stripper 'Front'?

Apparently IH built or sold stripper 'Fronts' in Australia but not in the US.

[Drysleeves]

First one was from the late 50's or early 60's

Second is a 403 chassis with a single rotor and the feeder dumps into the top side of the rotor

Last one is a modified 15 series chassis including a turret unload but with twin corn sheller rotors

 

As Bud Youle said IH and Deere were the only two companies capable of sinking millions into R&D and we're still reaping the bennies 6 decades later.

[acem]

Here's a write up on the development of the 1482.  I've never seen one in person.

The 1586 in the Pic was built by IH for testing the 1482.  30.5-32 rears, DTI466 set to run PTO speed at wide open. 185 PTO horsepower. 

https://octanepress.com/content/designing-1482-part-1

https://octanepress.com/content/designing-1482-part-2

[SDman]

Thinking back when the 1400 series were new, I don't know if any product demonstrated the shift in farm size more than the 1400 series Axial-Flows during their production run. When they first came out, all you saw in our area was 1440s. Most of the guys buying them were moving up from a 7/815, so a 1440 would have been a pretty good jump in size over them. After about 1980, the shift pretty much went to 1460s as farms were growing in size. In my area, it just seemed like most 1440s were the twin-stick, non-EOH models; while most 1460s were electric-over-hydraulic models, so they would have been later models. As far as 1480s, nobody had them around here until later production. That's probably what intrigued me so much about the Haynes custom harvesting, they didn't just have ONE 1480, they had EIGHT of them!!!

The 1480 probably went through several growing pains along the way. The 30' 810 head probably showed the lack of power out of the original 190HP 436 engine, as well as the unloading auger being too short. Its stuff that we still see today, every time one part of the machine is increased in size, all you do is find the next weakest link of the chain in the overall design that needs updated/improved.

[Gearclash]

7 minutes ago, SDman said:

The 1480 probably went through several growing pains along the way. The 30' 810 head probably showed the lack of power out of the original 190HP 436 engine, as well as the unloading auger being too short. Its stuff that we still see today, every time one part of the machine is increased in size, all you do is find the next weakest link of the chain in the overall design that needs updated/improved.

I thought the 1480 had a DT466?  No?  The 1440 was a D436 unless I recall very wrongly. 

[SDman]

1 minute ago, Gearclash said:

I thought the 1480 had a DT466?  No?  The 1440 was a D436 unless I recall very wrongly. 

Up through 1980 production, the 1480 had a DT-436 rated at 190 HP. In 1981, the 1480 went to a 210HP DT-466, although it still had the rotary AMBAC 100 injection pump. Starting in 1983 production, the 1480 engine went to the inline Bosch MW injection pump like the later 5488s had.

Ironically, the 30' 810 head came out in 1980.

[acem]

1480 rice combines had the DT466 from the start.

They all should have had the DTI466 from the start.

[acem]

Here's a few old topics on the development of the axial flow combine.

 

[SDman]

Here's some pictures from Johnson Harvesting's website showing how they went from green machines to red ones in the early 1980s. They still use red machines. They used to do a lot of business around here from the time I started in 1993 up until about 10 years ago. Since wheat is pretty much a "specialty crop" around here anymore, they don't stop.

As far as 1482 PT combines, they were very rare around here, which is amazing as their predecessor, the 914 PT,  was IH's most successful combine in eastern SD in the 1970s. Several reasons for the decline were: change in farming practices as the area was transitioning from primarily small grain production to more row crops, the 1482 was more $$$ compared to older PT combines, and also the 914s were still only 5-10 years old at the time so they still had some operating life left in them. 

[acem]

42 minutes ago, SDman said:

Here's some pictures from Johnson Harvesting's website showing how they went from green machines to red ones in the early 1980s. They still use red machines. They used to do a lot of business around here from the time I started in 1993 up until about 10 years ago. Since wheat is pretty much a "specialty crop" around here anymore, they don't stop.

As far as 1482 PT combines, they were very rare around here, which is amazing as their predecessor, the 914 PT,  was IH's most successful combine in eastern SD in the 1970s. Several reasons for the decline were: change in farming practices as the area was transitioning from primarily small grain production to more row crops, the 1482 was more $$$ compared to older PT combines, and also the 914s were still only 5-10 years old at the time so they still had some operating life left in them. 

In the last pic it looks like every vehicle is pulling something!

Great Pics, Thanks for posting.

[acem]

My (step)daughter dated a guy (for a little while) who worked for a custom cotton harvester.  They picked cotton from south Texas through Oklahoma and into Kansas.  They did not run new pickers and other equipment.  Pretty sure he ran a 4640 on a module builder.  

[dale560]

Here in North Dakota the 1460 was most popular for first few years. Although there were a few 1440s and one 1420 in the area I knew about. Dads 1978 1460 was bought new by a local farmer who traded it in 81 for an electric over hydraulic machine 1460 he then kept for 20 years. Dad bought it with 101 hours in 81. The 1480s all came in later with some custom guys having them. The local guys started about 84 or later with used combines then after the 1680s they big combined all took over. Some of the guys here had an early 14 series for years then got into trading combines every few years having many models of IH combines. The die hard Massey guys held onto the later 850/860 for a long time then traded those off for 1680 or 88 used machines

[Drysleeves]

Great retro pics.