Seed Cleaner Has No Moving Parts

Seed cleaner has no moving parts GRAIN HANDLING Cleaners (27) 16-1-7 "It does the job of a $10,000 seed cleaner but cost less than $100 to build," says Robert Lundgren, Elgin, Texas, who built a seed cleaner with no moving parts by using chaffers and sieves from old Deere combines. Lundgren salvaged parts from Deere 6600, 7700, and 7720 combines, mounting the chaffers and sieves inside an 8-ft. tall, 4-ft. square housing made out of 3/4-in. plywood. Three chaffers and a sieve are set at a 65 degree angle, slanting from the rear of the box to the front. The three chaffers are mounted one above the other with about a foot between them. The top and bottom chaffers are covered with hardware cloth. The sieve is mounted 8 in. under the bottom chaffer. Grain is augered into the top of the seed cleaner. Large and medium-sized trash is caught by the chaffers and drops into two 6-in. wide gutters across the front of the cleaner that deliver trash to the rear of the cleaner. Fines and dust particles fall through the sieve and slide down a chute and into the trash-catcher at rear. Clean grain comes off the bottom of the sieve at the front of the box. "It's cost-free to operate. The speed of the grain itself provides the cleaning power," says Lundgren, who built the seed cleaner two years ago. "Gravity cleans the crop and also aids in self-cleaning the screens. I use trash and fines for hog feed. "I got the idea two years ago while operating my combine. I needed a grain cleaner because the quality of my milo and corn was poor due to drought. I had a chicken feed business and my customers wanted high quality grain. "My home-built seed cleaner has worked exactly like I thought it would. I've used it on corn, wheat, and ryegrass seed, but it works best on larger grain like corn. Milo flows over the chaffers and sieves so fast that they don't catch as high of a percentage of the trash. I use the same control levers that were on the combine to adjust the angle of the chaffers and sieves so I can vary settings as needed to catch as much trash as possible without losing grain. The hard-ware cloth across the chaffers slows down the grain for better cleaning action. The 1/2-in. hardware cloth on the top chaffer also removes corn cobs while the 3/8-in. cloth on the bottom chaffer catches small stems that fall through the top two chaffers." Because he bags the clean grain as it comes out, Lundgren built the cleaner relatively small and he runs it at a rate of only about 100 bu. per hour, which he says is a fraction of its potential capacity. He says it could be built to any size by "ganging" chaffers together or by positioning the screens in a zig-zag design that would in-crease movement of the grain as it flows through the cleaner. Contact FARM SHOW Followup, Robert Lundgren, Rt. 1, Box 589, Elgin, Texas 78621 (ph 512 285-3900).

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