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Window Motor Controls Bale Thrower Speed
After he got tired of having to stop to use a hand crank to control bale thrower speed on his Massey Ferguson 124 small square baler, Kenneth Allison, Fairmount City, Penn., mounted an electric window motor on the baler that lets him adjust thrower speed from the tractor cab.
"The motor lets me adjust how far bales are thrown onto the wagon without getting off the tractor. As the wagon fills up I re-duce the speed," says Allison.
The bale thrower is belt-driven off the baler's flywheel. A cable pulls on an idler pulley on the belt. Allison mounted the window motor on the baler and attached it to the idler pulley cable.
"I got the window motor from a friend who was replacing a car door. I think the idea would work with any baler equipped with a belt-driven bale thrower," says Allison.
He also came up with an easy way to control propionic acid (crop preservative) application rates. He mounted a 3-speed car heater motor switch on a lever in the tractor cab. The switch is wired to a motor on the baler that controls a pump that applies the acid. "The pump and motor are part of a commercial propionic acid application kit that I had already mounted on the baler," says Allison. "To control the application rate I had to get off the tractor and manually adjust a pressure valve on a tank. Now I simply flip a switch to change the pump speed and there-fore the application rate. For example, I have to use more preservative whenever I'm baling in the shade next to our woods where the hay stays wetter.
"I mounted the wires that control bale thrower speed, and hay preservative levels, in a 4-prong trailer wiring harness, which makes it easy to unhook them and to keep the wires in the right order. You have to be careful where you mount the heater motor switch because it can get very warm."
Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Kenneth M. Allison, Rt. 1, Box 109, Fairmount City, Penn. 16224 (ph 814 275-3762).


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1997 - Volume #21, Issue #4