I've been pickin' corn forever, but know nothing about shellers.
I'm going to have to find a sheller, or some way to pick/shell on my farm. The MM shellers really appeal to me (watching them on YouTube), but I know nothing about them.
I have no idea what the capacity or characteristics of a D vs E vs 1200 vs 1210, but want to learn. Maybe one of these days I'll lay my hands on one, but would really like to know more about them beforehand.
There's alot of knowledge floating around on here - could you share some with me?
as far as bushels per hour im not to sure...but i do know that a d is a small one and and E is the same as a 1200 im told the 1200 is just newer dad said that when they was shellin ear popcorn if there was enough guys rakin it down that and E they were using would do 1000 bushel in just a hair over an hour..my 1200 im pirty sure will do the same if the corn is good and dry it will really eat it! it also doesnt take much power at all to run it..
Parts are rather hard to come by for any sheller anymore, sadly. I know of several in machinery parts yards in Iowa and Minnesota, but have no real source for NOS parts. I've gotten parts off of rusty old junkers too, and when I can find any, I buy them to strip down if nothing else. Several are still in use up in my area of Minnesota however, so that should tell you how reliable they are.
hudsonator except for the shaker pan and the crank and stuff most of it is common flat chain,sprockets,belts and the metal just gets wore thin but the right welding shop should be able to take care of ya
i can try to post some pictures its kind of hard to see in a camera but the best way i describe it is its like a 15 gallon drum with a hole in the top where the corn goes in and its like a crank shaft-screw the goes around and rubs the corn real aggressive and a majority of the grain falls through the holes in the bottom of the barrel "the cage" and the cobs and left over corn keep gettin pushed through onto a shaker/ seiv just like a combine
That sounds alot like the new, modern "Axial" setup for combines - doesn't it?
If you could scan those pages, they'd show up good. Or, let me know what manuals etc. you have that really show the detail and I'll try to find some reprints for myself if necessary. I'm interested in these shellers enough to go ahead and buy a manual to see what's going on, but highly value the first-hand perspective of somebody who's actually worked with/on one.
PickerDude,
Send me a PM, I'd like to e-mail you about your sheller - maybe send me some pics n' pointers.
As an aside, I thought I had one of the two MM shellers that were around here located yesterday. No good - already went to the scrappers. It was a D model, belt drive only.
yes kinda similar to that only instead of closin down the concave on the screw theres a little spring loaded gate at the end of the shelling cage that if you want it to stay in there a little longer to be sure you get all the corn on the cob you can adjust that tighter or looser it all depends on the moisture the key to maximum efficiency is just keep the thing either full all the time or just steady flow going in and it'll do a fine job just keep an eye on the cobs coming out of the cob stacker and if they're good and clean and all rubbed off aggressively your doing great if there is just a few kernals left on some cobs just feed it a hair faster there's no real adjustment on the thing its mostly how you feed it and how fast you run your tractor some people run them pto speed but sometimes that just sounds like its going way to fast and it could blow at any second haha! but on our MM m5 or M670 i run them it at about 1000-1200 rpm and 1400 is pto speed but hey everybody's different
That's good practical info that you don't get out of a manual - I appreciate it.
I'm going to order some manuals and parts books.
Thought I had an E bought out of Illinois - apparently my seriousness prodded a haggling neighbor to pony up. While I'm disappointed - I'm getting closer!
haha ya you ll have that this forum seems to be the place to look for them though...i never have to much luck around here theres lots of nice ones sitting in the sheds still somewhere but everybody wants ten times what they are worth or people think your just a scraper where ya located at anyway?
I'm in middle Tennessee. Barely across the KY line. Where are you located?
There are no shellers tucked away in sheds down here, never were any. The two that did make their way down here was in the 70's and were very used at the time. I was personally never around them - just knew about them.
However, what we do have in abundance in my region s the elusive "Snapper" pickers with no husking bed. Corn picked here was for beef feeding. Hogs were raised on whatever we could get through an All-Crop combine (wheat, oats, milo). Grain was grown to "walk" to market - not a cash crop to itself. By the time cash grain farming came into vogue - self propelled combines were used.
While I don't know about shellers - I could write you a book on All-Crop harvesters.
If I don't find a MM sheller - I may have to take an old sacker 60 and improvise. I do have an Allis manual that shows how to configure the cylinder to shell corn. It was a supplement to the 66 corn head attachment.
dang sounds like things was way different down there and i'm at rochester indiana way north of ya! and i had a 66 all crop last yr i bought it to keep it from the scrappers it was a nice one it just needed new canvas and a pully i never got to use it cause a guy stopped by and offered what i gave for it and he seemd awful ambitious to get it goin so i let it go now im on a mission to find a 3 row superpicker i got a 324 narrow row unit with a 326huskin bed on it
I suppose it is way different. We have land more suitable for pasture and hay with occasional cropping than continuous cropping.
With high grain prices, All-Crops have become a hot commodity around me too. However, about 15 years of neglect has left many machines in the "parts" category. Farming in my area of the country really changed alot in the past 15-20 years. A growing number of farmers (my age and younger) are wanting to "go back", but the generation of farmers who actually knew the tried n' true old systems are literally dying out. So is the equpment they used.
Not only that, nobody makes grain harvest equipment for the small to mid-sized farms anymore. There is nothing to replace an All-Crop, MM sheller, New Idea picker/sheller.
