Any ideas to offer on this???

Been talking to a customer about this for several years and I don't remember if I ever posted about this or not. If I did it was way to long ago to remember anything. Anyway the project has come back up once again and they are wanting to get something started ASAP.

Basically I've got a customer that wants to be able to break up large bales of wheat straw in order to rebail them into smaller bails. I know how things often get off track on here, so let me say this from the get go. I won't get into the logistics of the whole deal but believe me if they are wanting it done, they have looked into the financial side of things and wouldn't be doing it if it wasn't profitable to them, so that's not an issue.

That said I have looked at commmercial bail busters online and the problem with them is that they rip the bail up. In this case my customer markets the small bails to various major retailers and as such need them to be in good shape. In other words the straw needs to be 'whole' and look like it was bailed once, not ripped up into pieces and rebailed.

They tried to get one going before with limited success. The problem they ran into was getting the flakes in the big bail to break up properly and get "fluffed up" enough to feed into the small bailer. I know they said it's particularly bad if there is a bit of moisture in the bale as it really causes to individual straws to clump together into large pieces instead of breaking up as easy as the dry stuff does.

I've got ideas in my mind of the material being carried down a conveyor into a set or two of counter rotating fingers. They would pick the material up and flip it over into the second set of fingers, and so on, and so on for as many times as it took to get things completely 'fluffed' That's what I have in my mind at the moment, or something along those lines anyway. Based on what they had before I believe what I've got in mind, in combination with what they had origionally, and possibly with a few other modifications, can be made to work.

Now, what I'm trying to figure out is what could I use for the 'fingers' that would have the strengh to pick and flip the material, as well as the spring/resiliance to handle a clod, etc that doesn't break up, without breaking. Whatever is used needs to be readily obtainable to buy a new one to replace any that do break, and better yet to even be a part that would be found on anther piece of equipment they already have. By that I mean things like a windrow machine, bailer tines, etc, etc. Basically pieces that already do nearly the same job on a smaller scale as they are needing to be done on a larger scale.

In the end I'm just a glorified mechanic/fabricator. Other than buying a bale here and there for ground cover, dog bedding, etc, etc I'm not in the hay business. So, without the knowledge that only comes with working with the stuff day in and day out, like many of you do, I'm her today looking for any ideas ya'll might have to throw into the mix if you were to build something like this for yourself.

Thanks for any tips, suggestions, ideas, wild a$$ guesses, or anything else that might even be the slightest bit relevant and help me figure out the best route to take here.
THANKS WAYNE

I've heard of it from round bales to small squares, but that's tough, from a big square to a small square, yea I see the issue there.

--->Paul

I bought some big squares a couple years ago (hay) that were tied in 5 or 6 individual bales before being tied in the big bale and spit out. Pretty slick but I don't know if it was a special baler or if all of them would do it.

Guess your buddy is bringing them in tho and the square ones are for getting the max/safest load.....

A neighbor puts up his hay alone so does roundbales, on the occassion that someone insists on small squares, he unrolls a bale and runs the small baler over it. Seems to work OK but he doesn't do it often....

First thing that comes to my (alleged) mind is the rubber fingers they use on mechanical chicken pluckers.

Wayne, I feel your dilemma: it must be simple and cheap, yet effective and efficient.
Fully concur on your idea of using off the shelf parts or even machinery.
Shredding the bale is no option, I understand. Would cutting 6 inch thick slices (like slicing bread) off the bale and feeding the slices through a tedder help?
May be looking at some pics may help; try: http://www.google.nl/search?q=fluffer+hay+OR+straw+OR+cotton&hl=nl&as_st=y&tbm=isch&ei=E1lgT9fdHojOhAed4rDCBw&start=168&sa=N
Would such a machine help: http://www.rowserakes.com/fluffer2.html

Usually, poor quality hay will be difficult to "fluff", especially when baled wet. But then, this hay is no good for horses(?) anyway, so there is no money to be made there and you should not try to devise a process/machinery able to rebale poor hay.

I've seen processing units for making boards of a mixture of wood wool and cement (wood wool cement board). Wood wool is nasty stuff and distributing it evenly is comparable to the process you are looking at. Large rotating drums are used to pull the wood wool onto wide conveyor belts. On the outside of the drum "shark fins" are welded. The rotation of the drum is such that the wool is "stroked" by the hypotenuse of the triangles (shark fins) rather than "pulled".
Hope this helps; may have more ideas/suggestions later. Hendrik

Use a automatic cow brush that is used in freestall barns, hang the brush horazontal one over and one under,and your staw passes throught. These brushes are driven by eletric motors in the cow barn, and are about four feet long, and made tuff .Think of the buffer wheel you see in a car wash, that spins form over head s your car goes through, you did say crazy ideas where welcome too!!

For your fingers use the tines from a combine rain platform. They are a spring and are tough enough to stand scraping on the ground without breaking.
You might even find them used.

I would think a Tedder would do the fluffing you want the style with two to four wheels side by side that counter spin

I would try a bunk feeder wagon. The beaters in these turn in oposite directions. The depth you piled in the box would determine how much beating and tearing up it would do. There are many brands out there, JD Chuckwagon,Gehl, S&H, Rhorda,etc. My .02 worth, Jim

If you feed a broken square bale back through a baler, it never makes a good solid bale like the first one because the straw is already formed/pressed. Running it through a hay tedder would fluff it up some, but it would have to be broken down into smaller pieces first.

I've seen round bales unrolled and raked back up with a 254 NH rake and baled back in to small squares. I've also seen big squares being dropped on the ground from an old manure spreader one block at a time. The bale was set on the chain and the beaters on the rear were removed. Set the chain speed down slow and just drive across the field and it was spaced out so it wasn't dropped to close.

The 254 or 255NH rake has 2 baskets and brings the hay to the center and fluffs the hay up in the middle. That might work on the square blocks from the big squares if they are dropped far enough apart.

I have a 254 NH that I've used to spread large windrows back out if it had been rained on and then once it's dry just rake it back up. Just have to slow down(ground speed) in heavy hay to give the teeth time to do the job. The 254 will ted and rake. That might work but will have to be done outside in a field.

I think you're going to have a hard time coming up with a simple, affordable machine that "fluffs" the straw.

Two guys with pitchforks shaking up the flakes as they come off the large bales is the most direct way to get the desired result.

Don't see how its going to work, there are commercial solutions for rebaling round bales but that a lot easier than a large square.

Anything that refluffs the straw is going to lose and break a lot of the straw into short pieces. If it was marginal straw to begin with you might waste half of it.

The company SAMRO from switserland made a machine like this for a costumer in PA, USA. They had the machine working, but the buyer got into finacial trouble, so the machine got taken back to Switserland. I have seen it overthere. Very impressive.
The idea was to rebail big bales into small ones and deliver to Florida and then to load with vegatables and deliver in the North.
Get in contact with Samro, they already have a working machine.

ther are already someunits out there one is n the 20000.00 range. simple unit is what i was going to try,but it just did not pencil out after all the rehandling,string twice over again etc. to get the last 4ft of the round is realy tough. i know you said you didn't want break it up,well if you don't you are going to spend mot of your day unplugging the small square baler. I even unrolled them on the ground and then tried running back thru a mower conditioner to loosen up as you say the hay,yea right. after trying to come up with something in 5 yeaar time frame i finally decided you bale it right the first time.SMALLSQUARES and be done with it. but the unit i am thinking about unrolled itout thru a 4inch deep slot fed right into smallbale chamber. Chopper knives broke it up. Drawing blank on brand of unit right now thou. GOOD LUCK AND DO NOT EXPECT TO MAKE MUCH R ANYTHING when you get done.i still hve some of my hay equipment to get rid of yet thou if you need a large capacity small square baler,accumulator etc.

WOW ! If they waited this long then last year they should of just found a small baler and and ran around the field with it and had it all done by now. Some people just can't plan ahead.

How about leaving it in the Big Square and cutting it like a cake into small sq W/O fluffing. in other words,contain the bail and cut existing strings. Then cut l;ike a cake into 8 smaller bales. Then use needles and string system to retie the bail. Might be reletively simple. Jim

The biggest issue you are going to get into is the fact that re-baled straw is not going to look right no matter how you fluff it. I have fluffed it back up by hand and re-baled it and it is still broken up. Your customer wants it to look like small square bales for retail sales because it is worth much more in small squares than big squares.

The mechanical or physical issue is the fact that unbaled straw stems are round like pop straws. When it is baled in any manner it flattens the straw stem. So when you go to re-bale it you get a percentage of the individual straw stems turned from the original way they where baled. This makes another break in the stem so it will not fluff up like single baled straw. Hay is much the same way. So your biggest issue is kind of a rule of physics and you are not going to be able to change it. So you can get a machine to break the bale back up into individual straws and it still will not look like single baled straw.

A buddy and I spend about two years and a good bit of money making a re-baler to re-bale round bales of hay. We got a machine that would work but the end result was never very good even in hay unless you found real loose baled material. Then that defeated the hauling of the original hay/straw at a reasonable cost. The biggest stopping problem was that the leaf lose in hay was so great that you lost about 10-20 percent of your original weight. The better and drier the hay the larger the loses.

The best way is to have the first baling be with a small square baler. Then make those bales into an easily handle product. There are several machines that do that. The one I have seen in person is the Bale Bandit. here is a link to there site.
Bale Bandit

I have this unroller. Hydraulic drive. Doesn't shred or anything, just unrolls. Been trying to sell it. Seems like it could be made to feed into a small baler.

Try searching "Hay Wizard Hay Rebaler System" on Youtube,com
This is a video of a very fancy system to do this, not sure about the quality of the final small bales.

You can get a pretty good used harobed (bale wagon) for 10 or 15 grand, that will move a lot of hay- seems like the solution is to bale with small baler to start with, and automate hauling them in.

Customer showed that setup to me this afternoon. It's exactly what they are wanting me to get going for them, but at a price tag of far less than $70,000, the price quoted to them from the makers of the Wizard.

They already run multiple self powered stack wagons and use them quite often, when the situation warrants, to haul the small bales. Beyond that there are other instances when they can haul more hay per load using the larger bales and it makes more sense to do it that way. Too, they currently have have the opportunity to buy a huge amount of big bales for a song, from someone that has a huge excess they are wanting to get rid of, and by rebailing them into the smaller bales they can make a substantial profit off of the deal. Like I said this outfit is one of the larger commercial farms in my area and they have been at it lon enough that they don't do anything unless they know it can turn a profit for them.

That would be way to easy. Unfortunately they are wanting to break up 4x4x8 square bales which is a bit more difficult.

Ouch! $70K. I knew when i saw it, that it would not be cheap. Heavy duty investment. Good luck. Hope you can find a way to cut the investment costs.

When I read 4x4x8ft bales, I had a thought, then I read jnicholson's suggestion which was basically the same thing. Use a band saw and cut it into 8 smaller bales.

Seen pics of a machine that did basically that but the bales were smaller than a standard bale. Other than the nonstandard bale size it's a really good idea.

That sure sounds like the simpliest solution to me.
Now if you allready had a bandsaw mill laying around to try it on ?
Or take to Lyle's sawmill ?