Project Details

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Deck Plate Mechanism Improvement for Folding Corn Headers

Company: CNH Industrial

Major(s):
Primary: ME

Non-Disclosure Agreement: YES

Intellectual Property: YES

A corn head is used to harvest corn for animal feed. The objective of the header is to leave most of the stalk in the field and bring the ears of corn along with small amounts of husk and stalk to the combine for threshing and cleaning. A critical part of this process is the deck plates on the corn head that can be adjusted in width to allow the stalk to exit but snaps the ear off from the stalk to feed to the combine. These are typically adjusted by a single hydraulic cylinder and a rod the width of the header with a mechanism to each row. A folding corn head breaks this rod into 3 pieces so the head can fold. In some conditions the wing sections of the deck plates get stuck and don’t move with the center section. This results in extra losses of corn while harvesting and reduced yields for the customer. This project will investigate the potential root causes of these issues, propose solutions, and provide some testing of the proposed solution to verify the root cause is addressed.