Thunderstruck Ag Equipment received the innovation in agronomics award at Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show for its TNT Cover Plates.
What makes these two-time award-winning plates so special?
“The TNT plates are designed to balance the separating area in a rotary combine,” says Jeremy Matuszewski, president of Thunderstruck Ag. “What our cover plates are designed to do is to direct the material into the separating area based on how that rotary combine operates.”
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The motivation behind the plates stems from an issue inside the concave area where crop material can bunch up at the separator. This can happen in several ways, depending on combine model.
According to Thunderstruck’s website, the cover plates “drop the grain evenly across the sieves, preventing the overloading of one side” and create a “larger sieving area, better grain-material separation, and significantly less loss out of the back.”
Thunderstruck Ag’s patented cover plate idea is the brainchild of Robert Ruwoldt, a farmer from Australia. He had been using Copperhead Concaves for several years and invented the TNT Cover Plates to enhance his combine’s concave performance.
At Manitoba Ag Days earlier this year, Thunderstruck Ag won first place in the agriculture equipment category of the show’s Innovation Showcase for its cover plates. At that show, Matuszewski said farmers helped during the trial phase to develop the invention.
“We’re thankful for our farmers that did our testing and helped us dial this in,” he said in January. “Obviously, when you come up with something, you never get it perfect the first time … so we’re really thankful for those farmers that took the time to work with us to get this right.”
Thunderstruck’s TNT Cover Plates are available for John Deere and Case IH single rotor combines. Prototypes are now being tested for Fendt and John Deere X9 twin rotor combines.
