bale weight/compression

SHALER

Member
I sell a lot of my small square bales by the bale so I am too concerned about this topic, but will throw it out there just the same. I currently bale something in the neighborhood of 45 pound, 36 inch bales now with my older NH baler. Unless the hay is damp, thats about as heavy as I go. When I crank the tension down in order to get a heavier, more solid bale, I begin to miss knots. Anyone know why and if there is anything I would do to prevent this?
 
Tightening it more is too much tension (the "spring back" from the hay trying to decompress makes the bales tight) then you test the strength of the string/ knots and it pulls apart(my guess anyway).

Have that problem on a IH47 too(putting out 45 or so pound bales, after that everything goes). We want the bales tighter but if we crank it down, the baler starts to moans on the stroke, then the string snaps or knots pull apart.
 
Are you missing knots or are they failing at the base of the knot? If there is no knot in twine over the bale, you are experiencing a twine disk pullout. Tightening that tension may solve your problem

What twine are you using, i.e. 9000, 7200 or what? If failing at the base of the knot, you need a heavier twine, i.e. 7200 instead of 9000.
 
Good questions, some background- for starters I use 9000 sisal. Bale mostly orchardgrass and timothy, clover. Baler knotters work fine pushing out an approx. 45 lb bale - UNTIL I crank tension down in hopes of making a denser, heavier bale. Once I do that, knotters start missing like every third bale or so. If I remember correctly, I don?t see a knot, just the end of twine that looks like a question mark. As said originally, I don?t ?need? to make heavy bales. I ?fix? the problem I?ve created by cranking up and releasing the tension until I am tying knots consistently and off I go. However, I am always reading about guys making 50 or 60 lb bales and wonder why I can?t.
 
The 9000 sisal is for round balers, use a heavier twine for square bales. The 9000 is also a smaller diameter than twine for square balers, so that alone may cause it to pull out of the twine dog with the extra tension.

That said, one other thing to consider is who are you selling hay to? A 45 or 50 pound bale may be heavy enough if your customer is a petite middle age woman with horses. Even for men now days. When I was in HS, feed was 100 lbs bags and fertilizer 80 lbs bags. Now it is bagged half that much, but probably fewer back injuries.
 
9000 foot twine is designed for square balers. It is the lightest choice that is commonly used in square balers, but it is square baler twine nonetheless.
9000 can be used in round balers, sure. But calling it round baler twine is inaccurate. 16000 sisal and 20000 plastic is round baler twine.
 
One thing I will say is twine quality is poor at best . Every brand I've tried of sisal seems inconsistent in thickness throughout. I am considering plastic this year. We did 6000 plus a,year when I was a kid , don't recall this problem with twine . Not to mention the 60 plus price.
 
I would be willing to bet that the tucker fingers are not placing the bottom strand onto the bill hook when the needles come up. That could be the result of improper adjustment of the tucker fingers due to wear... or also possibly due to broken hay dog springs or spongy hay that does not allow the upper right dog to drop. If the latter is the problem you can try using a modest plunger head extension.... but that may come at the expense of bale shape and presentation...
You may also find that the needles themselves are out of adjustment. You need to go through the knotter closely and make sure it's set to spec according to your ops manual.

Rod
 
NH manuals advocate 'the systematic check of all knotter adjustments in the order they are presented'.

Many or a few little things a spec out of whack lead to misties under full load or near full load conditions.

And yes, sisal twine is pretty poor no matter where it is sourced. 9600/170 plastic is cheap, strong and consistent.
 
I use 9000 sisal in my New Holland 68 with terrific success. Also bale 45ish lb 32 inch bales. Going to dial those bales down to the 40 lb mark. We ain't lifting 60-80 lb bales all day - to hard on the back.

Buddy of mine use to run a New Holland 276 and he use to brag about how heavy his square bales were - of course you'd never find him lifting one, he was always in the tractor seat - LOL!
 
One of the best pieces of advice I've received on knotters is (and I'm very bad about not seeing the forest for the trees) is to realize that almost always only one knotter is giving fits. The other one is ok. Sooooo the advice was to compare the bad knotter to the good one, slowly roll the flywheel through the knotter cycle and see if anything is different.

Another nice thing about New Holland is you can download a pdf of their manuals, I believe including the knotter service manual, from their website for a small fee. They have great pics of various bad knots and what their cause is and how to fix, as well as setup and adjustment. Well worth the money and I load them on my tablet so I can reference them when working on the baler. New Holland also has a great parts website that you can download and print exploded views of your baler and knotter to see how it all goes together. This is free.

Good luck!
Bill
 
I use 9000 in my 273 with few problems. Sounds like the twine is pulling out from the twine discs, the question mark. May also be that the bills are not gripping the twines and pulling the know tight.
 
I think after this year I agree with you, I can't remember what I bought this summer 7000, 7200 I can't remember but it was $62.00 for a pack of 2 rolls, plastic is half that, I think I'll be going back to plastic next year. Should work fine in my baler.
 
The last pair of sisal I tried using got heaved in the woods... That was 10000. It was inconsistent. It wouldn't pull cleanly and every time the baler started to push a bit... it would miss. About 50 broken in an hour and that was enough of that BS... Plastic went in it's place and went to work. I mostly use 7200 plastic now for knot strength and ease of handling otherwise 9000 is adequate as long as the bales aren't super tight. Being 1/2-2/3 the cost is an added bonus. That saving is actually pretty small compared to being able to bale steadily.
The horsey set doesn't really like plastic.... but right about now (at least around here)... the only option they got is suck it up.

Rod
 
I am betting you do not have any bale wedges in the chamber? I would start by installing a set or two, that will give you a denser packed bale with out affecting tying, if you still have a missing issue then you can try backing off the twine tension disc a 1/4 of a turn on the missing knotter, when you increase bale tension it puts more tension on the twine making it be pulled out of the twine disc,, works foe me on any brand baler
cnt
 

Kind of related to what Casenutty said, another possibility is hung up hay dogs. I have had this happen with my MF 224. If more than 2 get hung up, the hay rebounds when the plunger head retracts. This rebounding of the hay doesn't hurt anything too much except it will make it so that your bale is not as dense as it should be. Where it really impacts operation is that if the knotter cycles when the plunger has just shoved a larger than normal slug of hay into the chamber, the rebounding hay will push the twine out of reach of the twine disc, so that you don't get a knot.
 
That 45# bale was heavy enough for us when we had the cows, tried for 40# instead. And I was 40 years younger than my curent of 72. Think the average person would like 40# 30" bales.
 

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