When AGCO’s Massey Ferguson 5713SL won a Tractor of the Year award at Agritechnica last November, one of the features that impressed the judges and helped the tractor win was the new, compact SCR exhaust emissions system. The Donaldson Company, known to many farmers as a filter brand, is actually the manufacturer behind that particular […] Read more
An exhaust emissions system that’s out of sight, out of mind
A look inside the workings of a new, compact "single can" SCR system
Comparing new tractor prices
A few weeks ago, Arie Prilik of MTZ Equipment Ltd., Canadian distributors of the Belarus-built MTZ line of tractors emailed me—as well as a few others—with a chart his company had prepared. It was a sampling of current list prices for new tractors in the 80 to 450-Plus horsepower range. “It’s not meant to be […] Read more
Case IH lands a tillage Barracuda
This new vertical tillage tool is an option for more aggressive field finishing
In early March Case IH introduced a new implement model it says fills a niche in the vertical tillage category. The True Tandem 335 Barracuda is designed for dealing with heavy crop residues, leaving fields a little blacker than some other vertical tillage machines. It is capable of cutting, evenly distributing and burying residue up […] Read more
A corn header with variable row spacing ability
New equipment design from Gerhinghoff
Combine header manufacturer Gerhinghoff had a significant new product line to introduce to the North American market at the National Farm Machinery Show in Louisville, Kentucky, in February. The brand’s new Independence product line of headers includes two new corn models, the Freedom and the Patriot, which offer producers some new design options. The Freedom […] Read more
AGCO’s swather factory hits a milestone
Hesston factory builds its 100,000th swather
“Ladies and gentlemen I present to you the 100,000th swather,” said Kyle Kitt, AGCO’s marketing manager, as he stood on stage in an auditorium at the brand’s Hesston, Kansas, combine and hay equipment manufacturing plant in late March. From then on, it was a little like a rock concert. Music played and lights flashed as […] Read more
PHOTOS: Along the Line: Assembling a Massey Ferguson swather
AGCO’s recent 100,000th milestone for swather builds coincides with the 70th anniversary of operations at its Hesston manufacturing plant. In all, the Hesston factory turns out a combined total of about 42 machines of all types each day. And many of the components for those machines are fabricated right from flat steel on site, a process that […] Read more
Spring sale an indicator of strong demand
This past Saturday I took in my first auction sale of the season, a Mack Auction Company event near Langbank, Saskatchewan. This sale had an interesting lineup. It wasn’t primarily late-model, very-high capacity equipment like so many sales include these days. This one was mainly older machinery. There were a lot of tractors under the […] Read more
Do or do not
I think one of the most motivating phrases to ever become ingrained in the minds of a society has to be the one that came from a fictional, little green movie character who could master the ways of the Force but not the English language: Yoda. “Do or do not,” he famously said in “Return […] Read more
How to weld 90-degree outside corners
Proper welding of a corner joint starts with perfectly cut straight edges
One day many years ago, another welding student and I were taking a break outside the door of the college welding shop. “I just love burnin’ stick,” he said, as we discussed what we were doing that day. (Burning stick is slang for arc welding, in case you didn’t get that.) I had to agree […] Read more
PHOTOS: How to weld corner joints
Here’s a tip. If you don’t take time to cut the steel properly, create good joint fitment and understand how to avoid the problems that applying a lot of heat to a piece of steel can create, the finished product will have a weak weld joint or won’t fit because it’s warped from heat distortion. That […] Read more