MacDon, New Holland roll out joint-effort combine header

The first spawn of Canadian harvest equipment maker MacDon Industries’ partnership agreement with U.S. tractor and combine maker New Holland is set to head to market.

MacDon and New Holland on Aug. 31 announced the debut of their “co-branded” combine header, the FD2 FlexDraper, when it went on display at the Farm Progress Show at Boone, Iowa, north of Des Moines.

Draper headers use conveyors, rather than the augers seen on conventional-style headers, to carry crop coming in off the cutter bar toward the centre of the header for feeding into the combine.

“The FD2 FlexDraper was introduced with the vision of pushing our harvesters to do more — more capacity, more flex and more speed — and get the job done in less time,” Curtis Hillen, combine marketing manager for New Holland Agriculture North America, said in a release Aug. 31.

The partnership, which was first announced in December last year, “combines the unique harvesting portfolios of New Holland and MacDon to offer our customers a cohesive harvesting solution,” he said.

New Holland said the FD2 can be mounted on any of its CR or CX Series combines and is available in six sizes: 30, 35, 40, 45 and 50 feet wide, plus a 41-foot double reel model designed for controlled-traffic farms. The 50-foot model is new for the FD2, making it MacDon’s “highest capacity FlexDraper yet.”

All FD2 models will have what New Holland called the Clean Sweep Crop Keeper System, “to keep the crop moving in the right direction by using angled reel fingers and tines, reel endshield crop paddles, reel endshield crop deflectors and inner endshield crop deflector fingers.”

The FD2 also uses MacDon’s Active Float System, which New Holland said will allow the integrated mechanical float system to support 97 per cent of the header’s weight. Aluminum components on the FD2 include its reel endshields, reel sectors and backsheets, helping reduce the unit’s overall weight, MacDon said.

The header’s float response takes it over ground fluctuations with up to 70 per cent more flex, New Holland said, and the 17-inch flex on either end of the three-section header “provides a clean, close cut with the versatility to harvest cereals, oilseeds and beans over uneven terrain without ever pushing dirt.”

ContourMax Contour Wheels are also an option, allowing the FD2 to follow the field terrain ensuring a consistent stubble height “whether shaving the earth or harvesting up to 18 inches off the ground.”

The triple reel available on FD2s measuring 40 feet or larger “mirrors the three-section header to provide a close reel-to-cutterbar relation.”

MacDon’s ClearCut high-speed cutting system includes new knife sections, two new guard options and an improved knife drive system, New Holland said, offering 30 per cent more speed than was seen on the FD1.

The ClearCut’s knife sections have “new geometry” that provides a 25 per cent larger cutting surface, while the ClearCut high-speed knife drive provides “the torque and durability to power through the most challenging cutting conditions.”

MacDon’s VertiBlade vertical knife is also an available option, “to reduce seed loss in crops prone to tangling like canola.”

The FD2 features a 50-inch-deep draper to deliver 20 per cent more capacity than previous models in “bushy, high-volume” crops such as canola, peas or mustard, while MacDon’s Active Crop Flow process allows for “head-first” delivery of crops along the side drapers toward the unit’s FeedMax crop feeding system, for “efficient feeding and improved threshing performance.”

“The FD2 FlexDraper was developed to create unmatched durability and reliability for customers, two key elements that are important to any piece of New Holland equipment produced,” Hillen said.

“Those elements are the pillars of all future product collaborations between New Holland and MacDon Industries, and we’re excited to take this first step.”