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CrestonM 
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 Topic: Stripper in the Cotton Patch
Posted: 06 Nov 2017 at 10:26pm |
I took this photo this past Saturday. This is one of the 880 cotton strippers grandpa bought back in 1982. (This is actually the 2nd one...he bought the first one in 1981) The first stripper he bought, he paid for in the 1st year, doing custom cotton stripping. The basket on the machine holds 1 bale of cotton (a bale being a unit of measure). He charged $40 per bale stripped, and stripped 1,085 bales that first year, paying of the $40,000 stripper. Actually back then, most farmers were using 2-row mounted cotton strippers, and these big new 4 row machines that you didn't have to hook/unhook from the tractor were high-tech and pretty hard to get. He said it was a stroke of luck he got 2 as quickly as he did. It sure beat the heck out of sitting on an open cab tractor in the bitter cold, only stripping 2 rows at a time. These strippers are based off of an F2 Gleaner chassis and cab. Powered by the 433I turbo diesel, which sits under the basket. Air conditioners were optional on these, and unfortunately these don't have them, which makes it pretty sultry in the cab on a 75 or 80 degree day. Usually it's not that warm during harvest time, though, and the heaters come in handy.
Edited by CrestonM - 07 Nov 2017 at 7:42am
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JohnCO
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Posted: 06 Nov 2017 at 10:44pm |
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Cool picture Creston. You should bring that machine to Hutch next year, Rachel would be verry impressed!
What do custom harvesters charge now a days?
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"If at first you don't succeed, get a bigger hammer"
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CrestonM
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Posted: 06 Nov 2017 at 10:50pm |
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I honestly don't know. I'd have to ask around.
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Gary in Texas
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Posted: 07 Nov 2017 at 4:12am |
Creston The 2 I helped with had 4 cylinder 433I Turbo, not the 301.
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jaybmiller
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Posted: 07 Nov 2017 at 6:26am |
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dang NOT what I was thinking I'd be looking at...lol
sure is purdy though !!
looks like the same rotating air screen my Gleaner A had !
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CrestonM
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Posted: 07 Nov 2017 at 7:42am |
 Gary in Texas wrote:
Creston The 2 I helped with had 4 cylinder 433I Turbo, not the 301. |
Yeah Gary, you're right...not sure what I was thinking...must've been a long day. Lol
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JohnCO
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Posted: 07 Nov 2017 at 12:05pm |
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Well, considering it was Creston posting it and not Shameless, I figured it would be safe for all to open.
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"If at first you don't succeed, get a bigger hammer"
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CrestonM
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Posted: 07 Nov 2017 at 12:38pm |
Here's a video I put together for y'all. Just shows some of how it's harvested, and formed into modules that the cotton gin picks up in the field later on, to take to town for processing.
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orangereborn
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Posted: 07 Nov 2017 at 2:38pm |
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WoW...Thanks Creston for the front row seat....Dale
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JohnCO
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Posted: 07 Nov 2017 at 2:41pm |
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Thanks for posting the video, Creston. I've seen cotton harvesters before but never in the field. A question you probably can answer is, what is the advantage of a stripper compared to a picker? It looks like it gets most of the crop and the head is much simpler and probably cheaper to run. Is it that there is more trash in the stripper product? Watching the press make a module is cool too. Is there some kind of retriever that slides under the module and hauls it away like a hay stack retriever? One of the videos after yours showed a JD picker with a round baler as part of the machine, making round bales of cotton and wrapping them, I guess that is the latest method of harvest?
BTW, there are a couple module making machines on this week's Big Iron auction.
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jaybmiller
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Posted: 07 Nov 2017 at 2:47pm |
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That's really neat but I gotta ask.
the 'press' in the 'baler'. is it regular hydraulic oil ? Sure hate to have a hose blow and damage the cotton !
and
HOW do you get that huge 'bale' outta the field ??
Jay
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Stan IL&TN
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Posted: 07 Nov 2017 at 2:48pm |
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I always wondered how those cotton packers worked. Thanks Creston!!
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CrestonM
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Posted: 07 Nov 2017 at 3:12pm |
JohnCO wrote:
Thanks for posting the video, Creston. I've seen cotton harvesters before but never in the field. A question you probably can answer is, what is the advantage of a stripper compared to a picker? It looks like it gets most of the crop and the head is much simpler and probably cheaper to run. Is it that there is more trash in the stripper product? Watching the press make a module is cool too. Is there some kind of retriever that slides under the module and hauls it away like a hay stack retriever? One of the videos after yours showed a JD picker with a round baler as part of the machine, making round bales of cotton and wrapping them, I guess that is the latest method of harvest?
BTW, there are a couple module making machines on this week's Big Iron auction.
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The cotton stripper is a very simple machine, and a picker is your worst nightmare. The stripper header in my video (called a broadcast head) was designed for use if you didn't want to follow the rows or if you broadcast seeded your cotton. There are also stripper headers that use row units, and you must follow the rows with them. Once the material is stripped off the plant, everything (cotton, leaves, burrs, etc) is carried by an air blast up into the Continental gin burr extractor. To give you an idea of how it works, here is a photo of a simplified cotton gin. Cotton and all the trash is blown in on top of the rotating saw drum. The saw teeth grab the fibers and pull them through narrow slots (In a true cotton gin, the slots will be narrow enough to prevent the seeds from going through, but in the Allis cotton strippers, the grooves are wider. They let the fiber and seeds through, but keep most of the trash out. HOWEVER...it is possible to not have your saws adjusted right, and they will let large amounts of trash through, and your cotton will look terrible in the basket.)
Anyways, once the cotton is pulled through the grate by the saws, a counter-rotating doffer that turns about twice as fast as the saw knocks the cotton off the saw teeth. That cotton lint is then carried by another air blast to the basket. See those black "fingers" to the left of the saw drum above? The material that doesn't pass through the saw grate falls through there, and in the strippers, it falls into a reclaiming saw, which is exactly like the top saw. The goal of it is to catch any lint the top one missed. Then the trash that leaves the reclaiming saw falls to the ground via a chute on each side of the stripper, right behind the drive wheels (You can see them in the video). It may sound complicated, but it's quite simple. A cotton picker relies on thousands of spindles in the row units that have barbs on them. I don't even know how to go about explaining them to someone who hasn't been around them, so I'll post a link to a video I found on youtube of a few old IH pickers in action. It shows the thousands of metal fingers that spin around on a drum (Think of a chicken plucker that uses those rubber fingers....turn the drum on end...think of the fingers being metal with barbs on them...and make each finger rotate very quickly. That's sorta how a picker works.) Also...each row of fingers has an applicator that dribbles water out onto the fingers so the lint will stick better. Because of that, you must carry a large water tank, and that adds a ton of weight. Once the picker fingers grab the cotton, they are also hit with a counter rotating doffer, then the lint is carried to the basket via air. Hopefully this next video will help you picture it better. We have a John Deere No. 99 2 row picker in our local farm museum, and it ran when it was donated. I still marvel at that thing wondering how anybody could design such a machine with so many intricate operations, so many little things to go wrong, plug, etc. I would never have a picker. Here is the video...at the 6 second mark shows the rotating drum in the row unit that has all the barbed fingers on it. Go to settings, then play that part of the video at 1/4 speed, and you can watch as all the fingers start to rotate, and the drum begins to rotate. Harder to see if you play it at normal speed.
Also...to answer another question. That big "press" is called a module builder, and the cotton blocks are called modules. Yes, the oil in it is just hydraulic oil. Hoses do burst occasionally, and from my experience, it never causes that much issue. A friend of mine had one bust a couple years ago, and the only "concern" was it got a lot of oil splattered on his 7045 he was using to power the pump. Here is a video I found of them being hauled away. It was always fun for us kids to play in the module builder just after they dumped the last basket full in and just before they did the final compaction. Jumping around in all the fluffy cotton was something we always looked forward to.
Edited by CrestonM - 07 Nov 2017 at 3:23pm
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Ted J
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Posted: 07 Nov 2017 at 5:13pm |
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WOW Creston, I had never even heard about these machines and here you've got 2 of em!! BIG difference between farming in Oklahoma and Wisconsin!!
VERY informative and I'm simply amazed at you.
This is true of me........
[TUBE]HNl_Fh0KEMY[/TUBE]
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DiyDave
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Posted: 07 Nov 2017 at 5:28pm |
If Ida known it woulda been that much trouble, Ida picked my own damn cotton... 
Anybody recognize the central pin, and gear, that the rebar on this Christmas tree is welded to?
[TUBE]6v54FeNCOfE[/TUBE]
Edited by DiyDave - 07 Nov 2017 at 5:49pm
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CrestonM
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Posted: 07 Nov 2017 at 5:38pm |
Ted J wrote:
WOW Creston, I had never even heard about these machines and here you've got 2 of em!! BIG difference between farming in Oklahoma and Wisconsin!!
VERY informative and I'm simply amazed at you.
This is true of me........
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Thanks, Ted! Actually they're not quite mine, but grandpa says I know more about them than anyone else in the family. Lol Hopefully someday they will be mine though, or I will have some identical. Some of the green farmers down here poke fun at me for liking these Allis strippers, as they make claims that they have no capacity. This is true...if you leave them stock. Stock strippers in today's cotton are total dogs...not worth 2 cents. However...there are some fairly easy hyper-mods you can do to make them rival a new stripper, capacity and speed-wise. The key though is you have to do ALL the mods. Can't just do one or two and expect it to work. Think of it this way...if I told you to bake me a cake and you brought me a sack of flour, you would be correct in saying that's the majority of the cake, but without the other "ingredients", you won't be doing much good. Even the strippers in the video haven't had all the hyper-mods done to them yet, which is why it's travelling so slow. If it had everything done, it would be cruising about 4 or 5 mph instead of 1.5 or 2. Your video of Roy Clark got me thinking...I thought about making Creedence Clearwater Revival's song "Cottonfields" play in my video, but decided I liked the sound of the machines better.
Edited by CrestonM - 07 Nov 2017 at 5:57pm
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Ted J
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Posted: 07 Nov 2017 at 5:39pm |
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John, I guess Shameless is so speechless after opening the thread, that he can't even type anything........You got him GOOD Creston! (I was kinda hoping,,,,,,,,,well, you know,,,,,,,,,one of them gals with the big,,,,,,,,,,er um,,,,,,,,,,,smiles to be jumpin up an down in it........
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"Allis-Express"
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CrestonM
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Posted: 07 Nov 2017 at 6:08pm |
Ted J wrote:
John, I guess Shameless is so speechless after opening the thread, that he can't even type anything........You got him GOOD Creston! (I was kinda hoping,,,,,,,,,well, you know,,,,,,,,,one of them gals with the big,,,,,,,,,,er um,,,,,,,,,,,smiles to be jumpin up an down in it........
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Lol, thanks, Ted. Maybe the brief "Deere sighting" in the video scared him too much.
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Michael V (NM)
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Posted: 07 Nov 2017 at 7:01pm |
excellent description there Creston...it would have took me all day to write that.. there's some cotton being grown around here in the TX pandhandle, the got some of those JD machines that make the big rolls, their quite a bit larger than a round bale..kinda different to see cotton North of I-40 here.. don't think it done real good, we had a cool and wet august and September,, and IIRC cotton likes it hot and somewhat dry..
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CrestonM
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Posted: 07 Nov 2017 at 8:11pm |
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Yep, you’re right, Michael. Cotton likes it hot and not too wet. But...not too dry either. In the past that has been the problem down here… Not enough moisture. We can grow about anything in southwest Oklahoma and get good yields, the trick is just getting the water to do it.
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exSW
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Posted: 07 Nov 2017 at 8:37pm |
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Absolutely first rate video
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tbran
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Posted: 07 Nov 2017 at 9:38pm |
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We sold some NOS stripper parts to a farmer in Ark. He still uses the stirppers, the key is growth control. A lot of gins would not accept stripper cotton in days gone by due to poor quality from sloppy farmer samples. Univ of Tn No til research had the process down pat. Deere even built a stripper that used an AC header - then the Deere bean counters had a come a part... "what are we doing? We ae building a $200,000 machine that will last 40 years with not much maintenance, that will replace a $600,000 unit that lasts only 5 years and cost tens of thousands to keep up... " The head research guy at UT got a much better paying job, the university got a big grant from Case and Deere to do SUPER STAPLE PICKER COTTON research. The farmer tour at UT for stipper cotton made this promise -grow 1000 acres of stripper cotton for 10 years and the stripper will put a millions dollars of extra profit in your pocket instead of the one building pickers... Deere won the picker vs stripper war via deep pockets..
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JohnCO
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Posted: 07 Nov 2017 at 9:53pm |
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Thanks for the great description of how it works, even I understood it! However I still don't understand why anyone would buy a cotton picker for more money and headache over a cheaper, simpler stripper.
Tbran pretty much explained it...
Edited by JohnCO - 07 Nov 2017 at 10:00pm
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injpumpEd
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Posted: 08 Nov 2017 at 8:38am |
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cotton strippers only work where it gets cold enough to freeze and kill the rest of the plant. We had pickers in south texas, and we picked twice. Kinda cool watching those you tubes. I remember back in about 1980, we were doing some land leveling near santa rosa, and there was an experimental jd picker that was a 4 row! Wow was that neat! Could only see it off in the distance, but it looks like what is now known as the 9940. You have to quite a ways north in texas to get to cotton stripper country.
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CrestonM
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Posted: 08 Nov 2017 at 9:30am |
injpumpEd wrote:
cotton strippers only work where it gets cold enough to freeze and kill the rest of the plant. We had pickers in south texas, and we picked twice. Kinda cool watching those you tubes. I remember back in about 1980, we were doing some land leveling near santa rosa, and there was an experimental jd picker that was a 4 row! Wow was that neat! Could only see it off in the distance, but it looks like what is now known as the 9940. You have to quite a ways north in texas to get to cotton stripper country. |
Back in the 60s/70s, that was the norm (waiting on a hard freeze to kill the plant), but now days most everyone sprays with defoliants and boll openers ahead of time. We've had a light freeze or two so far this year, but not enough to kill the plants.
With these broadcast headers it's actually beneficial to spray with a defoliant instead of waiting on a hard freeze. After a freeze the stalks get brittle and break easily. When they do that, they can get caught between the angle iron fingers in the header, then break off an run through the extractor, which isn't too good. Spraying quickly defoliates the plant, but leaves the stalks green so they are less prone to breaking.
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injpumpEd
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Posted: 08 Nov 2017 at 10:22am |
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We used to have crop dusters spray defoliant on our cotton to be picked. I really never knew why we would pick once, then 2 weeks later pick again(scrap) instead of just waiting till all the bolls opened up. Maybe the open ones would be at risk of falling off? We would have some pretty heavy cotton being all irrigated.
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210 "too hot to farm" puller, part of the "insane pumpkin posse". Owner of Guenther Heritage Diesel, specializing in fuel injection systems on heritage era tractors. stock rebuilds to all out pullers!
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Sandknob
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Posted: 08 Nov 2017 at 11:07am |
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Creston, do you mind if I share your video on my Facebook farm page? Sandknob Farms
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CrestonM
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Posted: 08 Nov 2017 at 11:52am |
Sandknob wrote:
Creston, do you mind if I share your video on my Facebook farm page? Sandknob Farms |
That's fine with me!
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shameless dude
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Posted: 08 Nov 2017 at 8:58pm |
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I seen the "stripper" part of the heading....and gots disappointed...then I enjoyed the read and vids anyways!
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Mikez
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Posted: 08 Nov 2017 at 11:10pm |
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Haha yea me to
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