Cadillac Portable Grain Cleaner

Cadillac Portable Grain Cleaner GRAIN HANDLING Miscellaneous 10-1-9 There isn't one like it anywhere. Most farmers can say that about something they've built using their own ideas and labor, but the portable grain cleaning unit recently completed and put to use by Don Phillips of Hope, Kan., fits that description to the ultimate. "It has over 2,500 man hours of labor involved in construction and that doesn't include the nights' sleep I lost thinking about and designing it in the last two year period," says Phillips. He had four or five part time assistants on the project and describes the unit as the "Cadillac" of portable grain cleaners. "It's a new style cleaner with all electronic digital gauges and there are two flows instead of one like most cleaners, so it does a better job," he notes. And 500 bushels can be cleaned in an hour. But the most unique aspect of the portable unit and the part of it that "really makes it shine," according to the designer and builder, is the gravity seed sorting table. Explaining that the gravitiy table will up test weight of seed, increase quality and improve appearance, Phillips says, "Wheat to be cleaned for seed could weigh 60 pounds coming into the cleaner, up to 61 pounds out of the cleaner and weigh 62 pounds after it leaves the gravity table. "This can pay for the seed alone. Every point higher seed test weight increases yield a half to two bushels," added Phillips. The cleaner and the gravity table were both purchased new from the Clipper company in Georgia, but the gravity table is actually the first one of its kind made by the firm, according to Phillips. Powered by a generator, the plant, "takes 64 horses to run the unit" which has 15 individual motors, says Phillips, who admits that some of the control mechanisms were a "nightmare." While wheat cleaning has been the first concern, Phillips also plans to clean soybeans, oats and alfalfa. "A stoner can be installed to clean beans for edible purposes if we'd decide to do that," the maker says. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Dan Phillips, Hope, Kan. Story and photo reprinted from Grass & Grain, Box 1009, Manhattan, Kan. 66502.

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