Not only has Vicon announced it is working on a non-stop fixed-chamber baler, but it is coming to the party all guns blazing with a combi wrapper unit. We had the opportunity to catch up with one of the pre-production machines operating in the UK this season — to see how the process works and find out how far the project has developed.
If a round baler wrapper combination averages 50 bales per hour, that works out at 500 bales in a 10-hour day. Now it takes roughly 15-18 seconds to apply the net, open the tailgate, eject the bale and then lower it again before baling can recommence.
This equates to between 2.0 and 2.5 hours each day that the tractor and baler are momentarily paused. These figures certainly make you stop and think, and that’s without even considering the operator fatigue of the constant stop/starts or the wear and tear of the continual cycles on the kit. So it’s no wonder, then, that manufacturers continue to work on the holy grail of round baler design — to make the packaging process non-stop. Krone has been in the game for a couple of seasons now with the Ultima, and last year Lely and Vicon announced that they would be throwing their hat into the non-stop ring.
Rather than coming to the market with a ‘me too’ product, Vicon has gone with a fixedchamber baler and added a wrapper into the mix. And it is easy to follow the firm’s logic: fixed-chamber balers are predominantly used in grass, and there is a growing trend towards combination machines. So rather than introduce a wrapper at a later date, the engineers agreed it was best to develop it as a complete package right from the outset.
We’re told ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’, and that’s certainly the case here when trying to get your head around the Vicon non-stop baling/wrapping sequence. So before reading any further, check out the diagrams at the bottom of page 21.
