Safety, be careful

I am sure you all know and have been told over and over but, neighbor burned up his combine yeserday doing corn, got thefield out before much loss, combine is total loss, probably more valu in cornhead than combine as is was a newer 12 row 20 inch head, just a be careful warning.

Y'know, I've developed a sickness that sends me walking the rows of boneyards. Most guys see scrap value, or a rare or missing part. But I see ghosts.

Amidst the ghosts, I see some very strange things. I see many more burned-out combines NOW, than say... from 25-30 years ago... and I ask myself why I see so many more old galvanized-steel machines with worn-off paint on the header, than newer machines... and that so many of the newer machines are covered in melted plastic and burned out wiring.

And something tells me that the plastic and wiring might have alot to do with it.

I could be wrong here, but in order to have fire, one must have fuel, oxygen, proper concentration, and a source of ignition. Back when everything was made from sheet-metal, the only sources of ignition, were hot engine parts, ignition, wiring, and static electricity.

Little has changed in that respect, however, engines are enclosed, many things made of plastic, and of course, turbodiesel power has thoroughly taken over.

Grandpa always told me to stop every few hours, and dig out ALL the latent field-trash and debris from nooks and crannies in the Gleaner. Fortunately, there weren't many... I think the designers took their time to make the machine hold as little dust and debris as possible... and where it DID accumulate, they made it easy to remove. Next, they were very careful to keep the power unit and electricals away from areas that would cause problems with debris and cleaning.

Last, but certainly not least... everything being made mostly of sheet-metal, would prevent the buildup of static electricity. Plastic, being a dielectric, becomes quite a capacitor, and all the material passing by, and sitting on big rubber tires, turns the combine into a huge 30-row VanDeGraaf generator... and eventually, that static electricity has to discharge SOMEWHERE. In tin machines, it would simply pass right through all the metal... and every so often we'd bounce the nose off the ground, and it'd discharge a little.

I think our newer machines, with all their wonderful teflon and plastic bodywork, electronics and turbochargers, can chew up so much more field, develop so much more static electricity, and not bounce off the dirt so much better, that we wind up with burning machines.

Or it just may be me, walkin' through a machine graveyard, and seeing ghosts.

Dave,
There was a lot of common sense that old designers had. I think, but maybe I am not right, it used to be you had to work your way up in engineering and have experience in many companies...I don't know that that is always the case now. I just see so much built anymore and I go why did they do it that way! What happened to common sense? I think you have something there about all the plastic!

Ted, I'd say there's a fair chance... particularly belts that use woven steel core.

I have friends who do intrinsic safety engineering (explosion-proof environments, etc), and they're constantly dealing with static buildup in various types of equipment... and ANYTHING can turn into an intrinsic-safety environment headache. I know that various manufacturers worked on designs where the steel belting actually extended to the outer edge of one or the other side of the belt, for the purpose of discharging static INTO the drive sheaves... and of course, then you have the situation of using some sort of contact or brush to direct static electricity from the rotating shaft to the chassis... so that it doesn't discharge THROUGH the bearings... anyone who's had U-joints and axle pinion bearings go bad due to a poor ground-strap in a car knows what electric current through a ball, needle, or roller-bearing can do.

Guy- you're right about common sense... the foundations of good design REQUIRE common sense, but oftentimes, the side-effect of a given design sneaks in and bites us in the butt when we're not looking. I've had the honor to work with many, many 'OLD SCHOOL' engineers, and found that oftentimes, designs that seem incredibly simple, are actually much deeper, and more complex than we see... and that the complexity is not in the components or mechanisms, but in how everything was executed, from the casting, through the machining, to the finished product. Most guys look at the inside of an engine block, and see a lump. I see where flying oil lands... and runs down along a ridge, and that lump directs it to fall in such a way that the crankshaft counterweight doesn't catch and flail it all over again... instead, it falls to the pan... it's that kind of introspective engineering that yields a truely clever, and artfully simple design, thanks to some very complicated forethought.

Darrel- the thing about the L2... is that even IF it had accumulated enough fodder for a fire, such a fire likely wouldn't have done any substantial damage or spread elsewhere in the machine. I don't remember which Gleaner my grandfather had... IIRC it had a 292 Chevy six... but I know that I got the task of giving it a thorough lookin' over, and dug out any trash that accumulated. Most often, the trash was in the cab! ;-)

Now... the other consideration, is that we're not harvesting 8-10 rows at a time with these machines anymore. The guy that works the farm around my place has a header that will knock down my mailbox AND my neighbor-across-the-street's mailbox, in one fell swoop... that equates to a whole lot more static, and a whole lot more trash, and a whole lot more dust that's being processed in a given minute. That ups the ante in ANY book.

A guy on the combine page says sunflowers will burn down any brand.