Twine Tension In 430 IH Baler

Hi,

Over the winter I bought an old 430 IH baler and tried to use it for the first time this evening.

Now before I get too far, I was performing a test baling on my field that I had cut yesterday. Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate, and now I have about a quarter acre of wet hay.

Anyways, I decided to try and bale it to make sure everything works. The first bale didn't work as I needed to re-thread the twine after removing all of the old hay from the chamber. However the remaining bales were moving through nicely and tying perfectly. The problem that I had though is that while the hay was very tight within the chute, the twine was not. It looked tight across the top of the bales when they were in it, but when I pulled the twine "up" on a tied bale in the chute, a lot of slack fed through.

My question is should the twine be that loose while the bale is in the chute? When I got back home and cleaned the chute out, the complete bale that came out seemed to fill up the remaining slack in the twine, so it seems to make sense that this is okay, but to me it just doesn't seem rit.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Yes the twine will be loose, the farther back the bale goes in the chute the twine will become tighter.

As a knot is tied there is a certain amount of slack in the twine. ( Note where the knot is actually tied in relation to the top corner of the bale.) As the bale progresses out the chute, it will expand until the twine is tight. (If you have the pressure on the screws/springs set properly.) Is that way on my baler, and I"m sure all others. The twine tensioning mechanism at the twine box is just to keep the twine snug as it travels the route through the guides, needles, and around the bale.

That is what I was thinking... The down pressure on the bale was pretty significant as well, and the wet hay might have been exacerbating the problem as when it came out of the chute, it was pretty limp at first, almost to the point of falling apart.

That is kind of what I am thinking. But with the first time using this baler, I wasn't completely sure.

Plus with the wet hay, I am sure this did not help matters.

Thanks!!!

Tim, as the others have said, the twine tension on the bale will be loose immediately after it is tied. As it travels down the chute, the bale "expands" thus tightening the twine. This is all controlled by the bale chute tension springs on the back of the baler. Be sure to clean out all the "wet" hay that is in the bale chute as it will rust everything up and cause you lots of problems. You will need to adjust the chute tension frequently as it varies from field to field and from day to day. Good luck with your "new" baler.

This is all making a lot of sense. I had the springs very tight as I like nice tight bales. While the chances of the knots breaking go up with a tighter bale, you can generally stack more hay density in the barn.

I have dealt with loose bales before, and personally cannot stand them. Just need to get that right balance.

The twine being lose right after the knotter is common. Plus you can't really tell anything with wet hay. Truthfully if it tied wet hay then it should fly in dry hay. Most balers will not tie wet hay.

(reply to post at 06:51:45 06/22/13)

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My old baler hates wet hay worse than I do.

I tried the baler out this weekend to attempt to salvage the hay that had gotten wet. All in all, she worked great. There was only one bale that broke, and that was because of bad twine more than anything as the knot was perfectly tied but the twine had a black mark where the break happened.

I have been experimenting with it to keep the tension better on it by giving a lot of down pressure on the bale and then decreasing the knotting length so that once it pops out, it fills that void that the twine left so that it is the proper size and is nice and tight.

I have to say though, that for $150.00 she works really damn good!