Central To Everything and Close to Nothing | In my experience, having an auto-steering on a combine and or windrower can realize some significant savings. In most cases, I find that most operators could cut 6-12" more each pass on average over a full day of operation. If you assumed even 6" more cut with each pass, that equates to a full foot of overlap pass to pass. On a full quarter section using a 25' header, there is 106 passes that need to be made. If you gained 12" on each pass, there would be a gain of 106' that you didn't have to cut or about 5 passes. In the case of a windrower, that is five passes that it didn't make and thus the combine is not making either, even if the combine doesn't get an autosteering unit. Your cutting speeds and costs of operation are going to be different depending on where you are but I think if you rolled these numbers up accross your entire operation, the efficiencies gained by adding the auto-steering to your operation would be quite noticeable. Those are just the hard numbers.
The intangibles, as mentioned already, are being able to operate in tough visibility conditions, allowing the operator to concentrate more on the performance of the machine, and making life easier for the cart driver. In the case of the grain cart, we will probably have a few customers put an auto-steering on their cart tractors this fall so that they can drive straight unloading too. I don't think it will be too long before we have the functionality for machines to communicate with each other to match up their operation, ie. the cart tractor talking to the combine to match speed and tracking while unloading. Bottom line, these systems allow a less experienced operator to operate a machine at peak capacity all day long.
As far as the costs go, in most cases, the farm probably already owns the auto-steering system for spraying and/or seeding so addding another platform to use the system on should be minimal. The universal steering products work pretty good on combines provided they have terrain compensation but given the choice, I would put an integrated kit on or order the combine that way as the install is much cleaner and the performance is just that much better. |
Is Autosteer on a Combine worth the price?
