John Deere - Remote Knife Bank Actuation

Different farming practices have different requirements for straw chopping length and distribution to ensure homogeneous cutting length of the straw in varying conditions, continuous adjustment of the counter knife is required. Customer surveys have shown that in most cases this is not done with remote control counter knife actuation in real time, the operator can adjust the engagement of the knives directly from the Greenstar touchscreen display. In low yielding conditions, the counterknife can often be taken out a bit without doing any harm to the chopping quality but saving power and fuel. In high yielding conditions the counterknife can be engaged more to keep the required chopping quality. With careful monitoring, operators can check the straw quality and optimize the combine's forward speed at the same time. In a field test in northern Germany, we've been able to increase forward speed on an S780 with 735FD header from 5 to 5.5 km h while maintaining an acceptable chopping quality, an increase of 10% throughout the harvest season. These adjustments add up to significant time and fuel savings as well as lower running costs. The S700, the automated combine.