Re: Ford 530 baler issue(s)

Posted by jjchvl on July 11, 2022 at 18:35:41 from (45.46.16.196):

In Reply to: Ford 530 baler issue(s) posted by jjchvl on July 09, 2022 at 07:44:44:

Hi Fritz. Sorry for another delayed reply but late evenings is usually the only time I can jump on the computer.

So! I spent another afternoon banging my head against that baler today but feel that I actually made some good progress. First of all, I switched around the eyelet grommets so that the worst two are up under the hood of the twine bay where the twine doesnt come out of them at 90 degree angles. I also put the best two directly under the needles. Furthermore, several were being held in place by screw clamps(regular worm gear hose clamps). Those clamps are wider than the rear of the grommets that they were clamped around so extended beyond the rear of the grommets and provided a much sharper/rougher edge for the string to catch up on. I fabricated spring O clamps from a vintage coathanger that work almost as well as the original "real" spring clamps that are still on the baler. Gotta use a "vintage" coathanger though since new metal coat hangers arent much thicker than 24 awg wire lol! So, after doing that, I got the right side(looking from the rear) to knot 99% of the time. There's still a loop in the knot but Ill work on adjusting that out with the bill hook tensioner later. So, the right side is now working very well. On to the left....

The first thing that I did was change the bill hook and during that process, noticed something interesting. Someone(probably long ago!) put a washer under the bill hook tensioner adjustment nut(between the nut and the spring). A rather large washer. And the tensioner bar itself has a protrusion that rises up on one side of where the tensioner bolt comes through it. Well, tightening the tension adjustment nut even a little caused the washer to contact that protrusion and, in effect, clamp the tensioner down onto the knotting mechanism. I didnt notice this at first because its not a complete clamp down. Only one side of the washer contacts that protrusion on the tension foot thingy whatever its called, while the other side of the washer can still depress downward to an extent(crookedly) and this allows you to still turn the adjustment nut thinking you're doing something when you're not. So I removed that washer and put one with the same diameter as the spring on. Im not sure a washer is needed there but one of the appropriate size certainly doesnt do any harm. After replacing the bill hook and removing that washer, we took it to the field for a test run.

Results were that I could get the bill hook to hang tighter or looser to the knots fairly accurately now by adjusting the bill hook tensioner nut in or out and we went from 90% failed knots to about 50% failed knots. But 50% is pretty horrible in this instance so back to trying to figure out whats going on. I then tried adjusting the twine finger on the left side as you suggested and found that doing so did decrease our ratio of failed knots but not by much. Finally, I got fancy and whipped out my smart phone and caught two videos of a failed knot and one of a successful knot.

IMPORTANT PART HERE

What I discovered by watching the videos in slow-mo is that the twine hook is getting both strings to the bill hook, no problem BUT when the bill hook starts its spin to create the knot, the new string that just got brought up often slips off the tip of the bill hook altogether! This creates a one string knot in the string that had already been waiting there and a clean cut off of the string that was just brought up by the needle. So what causes this phenomenon? I figure its got to be that the twine is under too much tension. This could be caused by the twine getting hung up somewhere-which, after shuffling the grommets around, Im pretty sure isnt happening OR the twine tensioner attached to the twine bay is screwed down too tightly for the left side. Having no experience with these balers, I have no idea what the twine tension should be. Im now suspecting that I had the twine tension too high all this time. Im guessing that the tension should only be enough to prevent the twine from being pulled willy nilly out of the twine box since, now that I think about it, I cant imagine any benefits for having it clamped down tighter than that. Is that a correct assumption? What do you recommend for string tension?

Anyway, that last revelation about high twine tension causing the string to slip off the bill hook before it could be tied came to me at the end of the day, while I was watching the video Id made. I loosened the tension but we didnt have time to go out and test the new configuration. The owner is going to mow(if it doesnt rain) and we will test later this week. Let me know what you think and Ill let you know what happens.

Take care.

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