lastcowboy32
Well-known Member
This issue is now heavily on my mind.
It's getting toward the end of our haying season, and we are setting ourselves up for the end of this year and future years with a "New Holland 552 Baler"... As in, we now have two New Holland 276 balers.
We used to run a 269 with a thrower and a 276 setup for baling on the ground... but we're retiring the 269... putting its thrower on the 276... and we just bought another used 276 with a thrower.
No machine is perfect, and with nearly 50 years of history behind the 276... I think that many would agree the Achilles heel is the tine bar.
It's not the tine bar per se... it's just the catastrophic cascade of failures that result from something as simple as the rice tooth flipping up.
The rice tooth (the spring loaded double tooth on the right side of the tine bar) flips up, digs into the metal at the top of the chamber... stresses the driveline... and then all "H" "E" "double toothpicks" breaks loose. From this simple issue, you could end up fixing...
-A 200 dollar stub shaft into the tine bar gear box (which can get bent)... along with all of the bearings and seals needed for replacement.
-A 130 dollar sprocket on the side of the plunger gear box (which can lose teeth)
-A 130 dollar "primary chain" from the plunger gear box to the stub shaft into the tine bar gear box (maybe just fix, not replace... but it will break)
-A 700 dollar tine bar. This is a killer, since the rice tooth seems to have a steel mounting pin through a casting. The casting on the 700 dollar assembly breaks, not the three dollar pin holding the rice tooth...
Usually, the knotter shear pin will save the knotters and needles. But they are definitely at risk, because breaking that primary chain decouples the plunger and knotter... there is now no timing relationship.
The new (to us) 276 has telltale holes in the top of the pickup chamber that tell me it's done the same thing at some point.
I notice that my brother's New Holland 575 baler, which has a rotor fed system, instead of the tine bar, has something as simple as a shear pin in the rotor feed. You lose a shear pin if something goes wrong, and the rest of the baler lives to bale another day.
Me? I can't afford a 575. I also can't afford to blow a grand every time something as simple as a rice tooth flipping up.
Why can't I just re-do the top of the pickup chamber with some sheet metal, so the rice tooth can't reach it? It would look odd for sure... it would need to follow an arc set by the tine bar track... but I'm willing to have an odd looking baler.
Why not just hinge the top of the chamber over the tine bar and open it up when the baler is running? OSHA might not like me... but it's up to me not to stick my hand in a running baler...
Heck... why not just cut the top of the chamber open and leave it that way? Nothing to catch on.
Or... buy a couple of new rice teeth and devise some sort of "breakaway tips" that will move hay but just break off, if they hit the roof of the chamber.
I don't like the idea of making the rice tooth's mounting "breakaway"... I would rather not run an entire rice tooth through the plunger/knotters... that seems to be changing one catastrophic failure into another.
Either way... something is getting modified... what do I have to lose, other than a ticking financial time bomb.?
It's getting toward the end of our haying season, and we are setting ourselves up for the end of this year and future years with a "New Holland 552 Baler"... As in, we now have two New Holland 276 balers.
We used to run a 269 with a thrower and a 276 setup for baling on the ground... but we're retiring the 269... putting its thrower on the 276... and we just bought another used 276 with a thrower.
No machine is perfect, and with nearly 50 years of history behind the 276... I think that many would agree the Achilles heel is the tine bar.
It's not the tine bar per se... it's just the catastrophic cascade of failures that result from something as simple as the rice tooth flipping up.
The rice tooth (the spring loaded double tooth on the right side of the tine bar) flips up, digs into the metal at the top of the chamber... stresses the driveline... and then all "H" "E" "double toothpicks" breaks loose. From this simple issue, you could end up fixing...
-A 200 dollar stub shaft into the tine bar gear box (which can get bent)... along with all of the bearings and seals needed for replacement.
-A 130 dollar sprocket on the side of the plunger gear box (which can lose teeth)
-A 130 dollar "primary chain" from the plunger gear box to the stub shaft into the tine bar gear box (maybe just fix, not replace... but it will break)
-A 700 dollar tine bar. This is a killer, since the rice tooth seems to have a steel mounting pin through a casting. The casting on the 700 dollar assembly breaks, not the three dollar pin holding the rice tooth...
Usually, the knotter shear pin will save the knotters and needles. But they are definitely at risk, because breaking that primary chain decouples the plunger and knotter... there is now no timing relationship.
The new (to us) 276 has telltale holes in the top of the pickup chamber that tell me it's done the same thing at some point.
I notice that my brother's New Holland 575 baler, which has a rotor fed system, instead of the tine bar, has something as simple as a shear pin in the rotor feed. You lose a shear pin if something goes wrong, and the rest of the baler lives to bale another day.
Me? I can't afford a 575. I also can't afford to blow a grand every time something as simple as a rice tooth flipping up.
Why can't I just re-do the top of the pickup chamber with some sheet metal, so the rice tooth can't reach it? It would look odd for sure... it would need to follow an arc set by the tine bar track... but I'm willing to have an odd looking baler.
Why not just hinge the top of the chamber over the tine bar and open it up when the baler is running? OSHA might not like me... but it's up to me not to stick my hand in a running baler...
Heck... why not just cut the top of the chamber open and leave it that way? Nothing to catch on.
Or... buy a couple of new rice teeth and devise some sort of "breakaway tips" that will move hay but just break off, if they hit the roof of the chamber.
I don't like the idea of making the rice tooth's mounting "breakaway"... I would rather not run an entire rice tooth through the plunger/knotters... that seems to be changing one catastrophic failure into another.
Either way... something is getting modified... what do I have to lose, other than a ticking financial time bomb.?