Having one set of combine concaves that can handle all seed sizes efficiently without the use of cover plates can be a timesaver when switching fields.
Winkler, Man.-based Thunderstruck Ag has just introduced its own Razors Edge concave design to make that a possibility.
“We’ve been working with concaves for the last seven years and with farmers to dial in a different brand that we represented,” says the Razors Edge concave’s inventor and founder of Thunderstruck Ag, Jeremy Matuszewski. “As I worked through that, we used cover plates. Last year we invented the TNT cover plates to control how the material unloads into the separating area.
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“The problem with cover plates is every time you change something, the machine changes — so you have to look at your rotor speed, fan speed, sieve settings. So I just wanted to come up with a way to use one concave with all crops, no cover plates, and do it by using a different bar spacing than what anyone’s ever tried before.”
Razors Edge concaves use a variable spacing that is narrower near the front and progressively widens toward the rear.
“In a typical concave section the bars are almost always spaced the same,” he explains. “There’s not a lot of difference between them.
“So my thought was, what if I created really tight spacing where the material first hits the concave section, toward the back it gets a little more open, and use the concept from the cover plates to control with my bars where the material unloads? Nobody had ever tried that before.”
Matuszewski says he took the initial Razors Edge prototypes to Australia last year for field trials and they performed well. But he says harvesting conditions on that continent are usually a little less demanding than here in North America, because of the drier climate.
After some minor design tweaks from lessons learned there, testing began here.
“My thought was, it worked great in Australia, but is it going to work in North America? I wanted to do more extensive testing in North America this year. So I tested it on 25 farms, running multiple machines, in Canada as far west as Alberta and as far east as Ontario (and) in the U.S. from Washington to Ohio, in a wide variety of different crops and conditions.
“It was really impressive. We made a couple more tweaks on things we learned in our testing this year, and we’re in production for 2025.”
Razors Edge concaves are available for most rotary combine models, with bar spacings engineered specifically for each combine, because rotors in each brand perform a little differently and need different spacings for optimum performance.
Another design difference on the Razors Edge concaves is a sharper and notched bar, to help improve threshing performance.
“I’ve laser-clad that edge, so it won’t dull,” he says. “It’ll sharpen as it threshes. We took the bar concept that’s been out there for a while and made it a little bit different and laser-clad it. So we have something that’s a little bit different. It’s a premium product and will last a long time.
“We used it in edible beans and there’s no cracking, because of that notch.”
The company can be reached through its website.
