Massey Ferguson has announced its new RB Series Silage Baler, the company’s first ever silage-specific baler.
AGCO and Massey Ferguson have designed the new RB Series Balers with a modern look, similar to European style balers with the rounded profile rather than a traditional square design. Another notable design feature that you’ll notice upfront is a cam-less pickup.
The RB Series is designed for small to mid-sized farms. As you can tell by the name, the RB Series Silage Balers are meant for harvesting forages in damp environments where hay dry down is challenging, but can also handle dry and coarse materials like corn or wheat straw.
Massey announced two models: the RB1460V, for a four-foot-by-five-foot bale from 35.5 inches to 63 inches in diameter and the RB418OV, for a four-foot-by-six-foot bale with a diameter ranging from 35.5 inches to 71 inches.
The new camless pickup has an 84-inch tine-to-tine pickup width and a five-tine heavy-duty bar design that ensures clean pick-up of heavier wet forages and smooth intake into the bale chamber. Long, heavy-duty tines feature a large coil for added flexibility. This reduces the chance of tines breaking when picking up heavy crops.
Several features of the RB Series baler design ensure the uniform, well-shaped bales, according to the company:
- The compact pick-up is positioned close to the rotor, ensuring smooth, consistent crop flow into the bale chamber, well-shaped uniform bales and increased baling output.
- The Constant Pressure System (CPS) increases the pressure as the surface of the bale grows, so density stays consistent through the entire baling process.
- Four continuous belts, made of multiple layers of rubber and synthetic material, have great tensile strength for a firm grip on the crop and significant pressure on the bale. The belts are manufactured with substantial overlap rather than joined with a seam, for less potential for belt breakage and downtime.
- The bale chamber has two rollers above the feed system and large CPS springs help the belts flex, allowing a quick start but ensuring that plenty of pressure is put on the crop right from the beginning as the core of the bale is formed.
- A crop press roller helps the pick-up feed in smaller volume crops, ensuring efficient flow and improving bale shape. It also levels out large quantities of crop to prevent lumps
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Reducing downtime
While making uniform, proper bales is important, Massey Ferguson has tried to go a bit further with its design, in hopes to increase operating control and reducing downtime with less plugging. A mechanical floor underneath the rotor helps to reduce plugging. Massey is calling this the HydroFlex Control system.
The RB series silage balers also feature the Xtracut 17 with two sets of hydraulically operated knife banks giving operators the option of not chopping or having 8, 9 or 17 knives engaged, allowing for smaller cuts and adjustable cutting lengths up to 2.65 inches. The Xtracut 17 also is controlled from the cab, for quick adjustment so operators can cut the forage to best match crop conditions and animal feed requirement.
Watch for upcoming videos on the new RB Series Silage Balers, which were on display at the Farm Progress Show and Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show, on AgDealerTV.
