New Holland Agriculture and Construction has been honored with four prestigious AE50 Awards for smart engineering innovations by the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE). The AE50 awards are presented for the fifty most innovative product ideas to enter the market in 2014. They honor new product ideas that are ranked highest in innovation, significant engineering advancement, and impact on the market served.
“We’re proud to receive these awards recognizing industry-leading advances in technology,” says Abe Hughes, New Holland’s Vice President of North America. “In 2015, New Holland will be celebrating our 120th year as an innovator, and these AE50 awards affirm our continued commitment to providing the smart, cutting-edge technology growers need to increase their efficiency and profitability.”
The New Holland award winners include:
- QuickMax disc cutterbar quick-change knife system
- 41-foot760CG Varifeed grain header
- Integration of LIN remote-control actuators on New Holland CR combines
- Triple-Clean cleaning shoe technology for CX5000 and CX6000 Elevation combines
The optional QuickMax quick-change knife system provides a quick and easy method to flip or replace the cutterbar knives on New Holland Durabine disc headers for Speedrower self-propelled windrowers or on Discbine 313 or 316 disc mower-conditioners. The QuickMax system greatly improves the operator’s productivity because it allows a full set of cutterbar knives to be flipped or replaced in about a third of the time required to change knives on the standard, bolted, retention system.
The 41-foot 760CG Varifeed grain header was developed specifically for the harvester who is using a controlled traffic harvesting method, to limit ground compaction to very small, specific tracks in the field. This header provides the exact product needed to optimize this harvesting practice, which increases yields and reduces or eliminates the need for tillage to break up compacted soil.
The header is ideal to work in combination with a 120-foot sprayer, which is compatible with 40-foot or 60-foot seeders, ensuring that only three defined paths are needed to plant, care for and harvest a 120-foot swath of crop. In addition to being sized specifically for those following controlled traffic farming methods, the header also provides extra-wide cutting width to take advantage of the higher capacities of today’s combines.
The integration of electrical LIN (Local Interconnect Network) remote-control actuators as standard equipment in New Holland CR combines enhances the accuracy and reliability of these harvesters. This is the first time an agricultural equipment manufacturer has adapted the use of LIN to connect to electrical remote actuators in harvester equipment. This kind of communication has been widely adopted by the automotive industry to support the increasing number of distributed electronic systems in today's vehicles.
LIN is used for communication between components in the combine. A single data wire replaces the heavy power cable and small electronic actuators replace hydraulic pumps and hoses. The system automates the operation and diagnostics of a variety of functions without the use of hydraulics (including threshing concave position, sieve opening, unloading tube pivot point position, unloading spout position, straw chopper deflector plate position, etc.). This technology is offered as standard equipment on all New Holland CR combines and will be adapted to even more of the combine functions in the future.
The new Triple-Clean cleaning shoe of New Holland CX5000 and CX6000 combines is a simple and innovative feature that increases the cleaning capacity by as much as 15% more than a dual-cascaded cleaning system.Through the extra cascade in the center of the grain pan, an additional air blast from the new Triple-Clean™ cleaning fan removes large volumes of chaff and short straw, before final cleaning even starts on the main sieves. This means that the grain is almost completely cleaned in the first 20 in. of the cleaning shoe, resulting in excellent grain quality. This triple cascade approach maintains the highest quality of cleaning even when the machine is working at its highest capacity.