round baler woes

[parts man]

This is less of a "broke" and more of a "wore out", but I figured I'd put it here, cause either way, it's just busted! :banghead3

We did a little under 100 bales with our round baler so far this year, and when doing the regular maintenace found a bad bearing on one of the forming rollers. Of course it was one of the rollers on one of the belt tensioning arms, so all the belts have to come out, and the sheilding at the front of the baler so the tensioning arm can come out through the front.
http://www.chowntractorparts.com/posts/baler1.jpg

Once we got inside, we found 5 of the 10 forming rollers had bad bearings as well, and the second roller on the arm laying on the front of the baler visible in the above picture is such a PITA to get to, we decided we should do it while we were in there. :bonk:

The bearings press into the end of the rollers, and had to be pulled out. We fasioned a make shift slide hammer style puller.

http://www.chowntractorparts.com/posts/puller.jpg

The box of parts in the below picture was just about $700! Great way to get rid of any extra money burning a hole in the pockets! :banghead3

http://www.chowntractorparts.com/posts/balerparts.JPG

[parts man]

While the belts were out it was recomended that we even them up (a couple had to be repaired over the years), and put new lacings on the worn ends. The belts were shortened to match the shortest belt (luckily both ends of it were good), and then the ends were smoothed off for the lacings.

http://www.chowntractorparts.com/posts/grind.jpg

The lacings were attached.

http://www.chowntractorparts.com/posts/lacing.jpg

http://www.chowntractorparts.com/posts/crimp.jpg

[parts man]

Once the new bearings were installed, and the rollers all back into the baler, you get to figure out where all those belts go! :omg:

http://www.chowntractorparts.com/posts/belts.jpg

And then fasten them back together (not a big job).

http://www.chowntractorparts.com/posts/belthook.jpg

We're now just waiting on an IH dealer mech. to come for the final adjustments. I'll get a pic of the finished baler, and I'm going to scan a couple of pages from the owners manual that show how the baler forms a bale (pretty cool).

[jodyand]

Cool Clipper lacing. I use to do that back when i work for a belt splicing company. We did more hot and cold splicing then mechanical splicing though. Thanks for all the pictures and glad you got your machine going. :fing32: Oh a 24 grit grinding disk works better on rubber then that hard stone disk you are using.

[parts man]

Thanks for the tip Jody,, we were just using what we had on hand. ;)

[jdkubotamurray]

Balers and Cornpickers seem to be mechanical AH's! :fing20: Plenty of opportunities for good designers there.

[King of Obsolete]

excellent photo shoot. like the $700 box of parts and did you get a KISS, LOL looks like it was a very big job you guys did.

thansk

[rockinmywaypa]

You're very lucky that box was only 700, but then it's not green. I went in yesterday to get a bearing that goes on the bottom roller on the door area, good picture of spot 2nd pic up and it cost $153. for 1 bearing, ouch

[parts man]

KoO,, no kiss, the %^$#^&* didn't even say he would give me a call!!! :D

Pa, $153! Ouch!!! Hope it was a numbered, limited edition! :D

[King of Obsolete]

that is not good, i hate when they do that and of course with a smile on their face too.
thansk

[parts man]

It's been a few days, but we finally got some weather to check out our repair, and the prognosis is good. :trink39: We baled about 135 bales of dry hay today and it worked A1. :congrats:
I noticed I never did post the pages from the owners manual that show the operation of the baler. Keep in mind that these pictures are specific to the CASEIH 3430 model baler, but are fairly typical of all solid core balers.

http://www.chowntractorparts.com/posts/rbf1.jpg

http://www.chowntractorparts.com/posts/rbf2.jpg

[Ohioplowboy]

Been looking at round balers....what would you suggest?


Silage capabilities are 100% important, but dont want/need HUGE bales.

Think I want netwrap as well. Do you have a wrapper to make silage bales? Would like an H&S 3 pt mount.

[parts man]

OHPB, We are VERY satisfied with our baler, but there are quite a few good balers out there. We have found there is more difference in operaters than balers for the most part. Our baler is actually a Heston painted and decalled CASEIH. You can find this same baler in quite a few paint schemes.
If your main purpose for the baler is going to be silage, you might consider a Claas "rolant" baler. They are a soft core baler that use rollers only to form the bale, no belts, or posibly only a short section at the bottom to help roll the bale, and are net-wrap capable. The roller style baler take more HP to run, and don't make as tight a bale because the hay just flops around in the chamber until the chamber gets full and starts compressing the hay, but they do stand up better to making a lot of silage.
Our baler makes silage fine, and we have done oat silage with it which is much wetter and heavier than grass silage.
In a solid core baler, I would recomend Gehl, Heston, and JD in that order, bearing in mind I don't have a frame of reference for the New Holland balers (never used one).
I don't have any experience with a Claas either, but have talked with a couple of guys who use them and are well satisfied.
I'm sure there are quite a few other fine balers too, but those are the ones I'm familiar with, and comfortable recomending.
HTH :fing32:

[Ohioplowboy]

the fella who made my oat silage for me used a Claas Rolant... I cant get past the ugly factor though. wow is it fugly.

I knew about the Hesston relationship, in fact if I ever go bigtime into idiot cubes I will have a Hesston inline baler.

thanks for your time.

[parts man]

ROF,, I agree!
I prefer the solid core balers because you get a much firmer bale, more hay in the bale, and they take less HP to run (an important factor here, because our biggest tractor is only 50HP).

I noticed I missed the wrapper question too, our neighbor wraps for us, we don't have our own. We only wrap 100 bales or so /year, and some years none, so having our own wrapper isn't practical. I don't know what make his is, but it's red and yellow. :D It's an individual wrapper. They take a30-50% more wrap, but you have much less waste.