John Deere releases new combine headers, including a three-piece hinge draper reel system and a new 18-row corn head with 30” spacing. The new front-end equipment is designed to improve efficiency and capture as much crop as possible, no matter the situation.
“Our goal is to ensure John Deere combines are as productive as possible, and that all starts with the header,” said Bergen Nelson, go-to-market manager for harvest equipment in the U.S. “These headers are built to consistently feed the combine, keeping harvest productive and efficient. We know that how the crop is taken off the field is as important as how the field is left behind and all that starts with the front end.”
For model year 2026, John Deere introduces a new three-piece CAM reel with dense pack fingers. This three-piece reel is engineered for high performance harvesting, particularly in challenging crops such as pulses (legumes) and edibles, which have a shorter stature and lower podding. The design helps recover down and lodged crops, minimizing grain loss and increasing productivity. The dense pack fingers have 32% more tines compared with previous flip-over reels, providing an efficient material sweep from the knife to maximize grain capture. With an ability to maintain consistent reel-to-knife relationship, the three-piece reel helps enhance feeding capacity, ensuring every seed counts.
The new CF18 30 is an 18-row, 30-inch-spaced folding corn head with this row size and spacing. The header is designed to optimize the production system to match the frame width of 36-row planters to eliminate having to harvest a wide/narrow “guess” row. The CF18 30 can decrease the number of passes by 11% per quarter section, compared with the CF16 30. The CF18 30 is compatible with StalkMaster and is engineered for use with the John Deere X9 combine series.
