PRACTICAL TEST: During harvest ‘97 a number of farmers trialled Claas’s new Vario header, which enables the operator to steplessly extend/retract the cutterbar on the move. profi reviews the technology involved
What combine driver hasn’t, at some time, cursed his table for having either too much of a gap between knife and auger – or too little. Now Claas reckons it has come up with a cure, the Vario cutterbar which enables the table to be extended/retracted on the move.
Cutting laid crops is where this header really scores. When tucking into crops heads-first, for example, the feed auger tends to grab at the crop, creating an uneven material flow up and into the throat of the machine. In these conditions the Vario operator can move the table up to 20cm away from the auger simply by pressing a button on the joystick. Conversely, when cutting the crop in the direction it’s laid, the table can be retracted by up to 10cm from its standard position. The overall effect is to improve crop feed and hence threshing performance in difficult harvesting conditions. Four hydraulic rams power the cutterbar forwards/backwards, with its current position indicated on an easily visible scale to the left of the header.
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