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| Here's Scott's comments from earlier this year:
http://talk.newagtalk.com/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=352938&mid=276...
I'm going to preface all of this by saying that I have no direct field experience with Krone balers and all knowledge I have on them is from reading their documentation and hearsay. Take it with a grain of salt. :) I do, however, have some years of experience with the Hesston/Massey balers.
I can't say whether Scott did this or not, but something to bear in mind is that the Hesston balers have an adjustable stuffer chute which allows you to control the shape as well as the size of the flake. From the factory the balers come set nearly wide open and this is the best setting for dry hay, but depending on the type of crop and how wet it is you'll see greatly improved feeding for wet hay and silage by closing the chute down (while maintaining a 1" taper that grows from the entrance of the chute to the exit). This will reduce the load on the packer and stuffer to reduce plugging, clutch slipping and shearbolt breakage.
Krone advertises that their balers don't use shearbolts and instead use ratchet clutches. I've heard this does work well for getting plugs to feed through, but I've also been told that it has a jack hammer effect on the drives and there have been some cases where the stuffer drive has been broken. Granted, this is 3 year old knowledge so they may have made changes since then.
Capacity wise the balers will be about equal. Amongst the 3x3 balers the Massey 2150 runs 47 plunger strokes per minute and the Krone 890 runs 50 (Krone does have High Speed balers now that run higher speeds than their predecessors, but the 3x3s appear to be unaffected by this change based on their literature). Assuming neither is limited by the pickup or stuffer and they're both running the same flakes per bale (and length), the Krone will have about 6% more capacity. However, it's been my experience with cutter balers that usually the cutter is the limiting factor; at least while the knives are engaged. Most guys I've talked to seem to prefer running around 40 flakes per bale on an 8ft bale as it makes the bale easier to bust apart and process as well as makes the heaviest bale. I know the Hesston balers can generally be pushed down to 30-35 flakes per bale to get the most baler capacity (throughput) while maintaining a stackable bale. I've heard of 20-25 flakes per bale, but I think that was on the larger 3x4 and 4x4 balers. I have my doubts that a 3x3 could choke that down.
I do think Krone has a better cutter in terms of capacity and as mentioned before, knife access is easier as well (a slide out drawer versus crawling under the baler for a Hesston). Krone uses a lot of shaft drives while Hesston uses chains. I haven't heard of many reliability problems on either. As far as the Hesston balers go, you have to keep in mind that most of the chains drives are pretty low speed so wear is minimal. Servicing the chain drives is cake.
For dry hay, I'd personally pick the Hesston, hands down. For silage, I'm not so sure. | |
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Best big Square baler and why
