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| I have worked with 680's and 690's fitted with the chopper and powercast tailboard combination, but I have found getting an EVEN 40' spread is probably optimistic unless the stars align perfectly. I have been on farms where growers have said they have spread 45' with the same combines, but upon closer inspection they realized they distributed most of the longer/denser material out to the ends of the pattern, with just short straw and chaff in the center 10-15'. Not good.
Here are the things I have found to HELP spread wheat straw evenly.
1) Discharge Vanes. Adjust the discharge vanes to feed material into chopper as evenly as possible. This is critical, becuase if you don't feed the chopper evenly, you don't get good chopping, plus the powercast tailboard wont spread it evenly. Adjustments are made with the new screw on the back. If the residue is damp, you will likely have to adjust the deflectors left (when viewed from the rear). if the residue is dry, then they will need to be adjusted right. Making adjustments to this is where you need to start. If its a new combine, look at the paint loss on the chopper knives and the housing, as these will quickly show you where the material is flowing and tell you where to direct the residue.
2) Center Divider (on tailboard). You said with the center divider removed it did better. I have not found that to be the case within the conditions I work with (at least with the other settings we had made). What I found was removing the center divider allowed an even spread, but only out to about 30' (even with maximum spreader speed). I have seen growers cut the center divider down to about half height and it helped, but again I really think you need at least a shortened divider in place.
3) Tailboard Height. JD suggests the tailboard needs to be operated level and i'm sure they have seen conditions which back this statement up. However within the conditions I work with, I have had better luck speeding up the spreaders and dropping the rear of the tailboard (with the center divider still in place). This seems to throw more material to the center and less to the ends. Its easy to adjust now, so try moving it down without other changes and see if it helps.
4) Tailboard Vanes. To get the best spread uniformity across 40' I think you will need to position every other tailboard vane forward and the remainder in the rear position (with the center divider still in place).
5) Spreader Speed. You can adjust the spreader speed according to the conditions during the day, but you will need to be close to maximum.
6) Chop Length. By engaging the stationary knives all the way, you obviously get a finer chop, but its almost always more difficult to spread the shorter material. Leaving the material longer helps with spreading.
7) Lastly, uniform crop feeding into the combine with the head is critical to get uniform loading on the combine, chopper and even spreading with the tailboard. Despite frequent claims the draper heads feed better, some of the brand new ones are still not acceptable within certain crop or moisture levels. Uneven feeding at the front is often the cause of staggered residue distribution at the back and I dread to think what its doing to combine performance/grain losses!
If anyone else has some ideas that they have found to help spreading residue with these combine chopper configurations, please post below or email me, because I have spent 2 hours making adjustments to specific combines and still walked away shaking my head. Most of my growers are no-till, so even residue distribution is critial.
Phil N
http://www.needhamag.com
Edited by Phil N 6/3/2012 22:44
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Powercast tailboard S680
