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Did Deere & Co. “Bury” The Bi-Rotor Combine?
Recent news that the prototype of the original Bi-Rotor combine was auctioned off after the death of inventor Mark Underwood raised a question I haven’t thought about in a long time: Did Deere purchase the 17 Bi-Rotor Combine patents in 1995 just so it could bury the promising machine?
As a reminder, Underw
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Did Deere & Co “Bury” The Bi-Rotor Combine? COMBINES Miscellaneous Recent news that the prototype of the original Bi-Rotor combine was auctioned off after the death of inventor Mark Underwood raised a question I haven’t thought about in a long time: Did Deere purchase the 17 Bi-Rotor Combine patents in 1995 just so it could bury the promising machine? As a reminder Underwood’s combine had a threshing system with dual-rotating drums one inside the other The outer drum moved slower than the inner unit and reports said the system was more efficient and did less damage to crops Underwood first put the system inside an IH 1480 combine and then he teamed up with Ralph Langergren to build a Bi-Rotor prototype from the ground up Field tests were promising when FARM SHOW first reported on the machine in Vol 10 No 3 in 1986 It was a beautifully-designed machine that eliminated nearly all chains augers shafts pulleys and other high-wear components Bringing a new combine to market proved to be more than the Kansas farmers could handle and they reportedly had competing offers from Caterpillar and Deere in 1995 When Cat missed a deadline the two men sold their patents to Deere which many of us suspected had no intention of putting it on the market since they had their own rotary combines in development Cat went on to buy the North American rights to Claas combines The prototype Bi-Rotor was bought at the recent auction for $22 000 by David Hockemeyer president of Peridot Inc a Hoagland Ind product development company that makes planter parts for Deere and Kinze among other things The company plans to set its engineers loose taking the Bi-Rotor apart and determining whether the innovative harvesting system can be improved with modern technologies such as computer-aided design Since the patents have expired they should be free to finally bring the Bi-Rotor design to market Stay tuned
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