The cutting tools of a forage harvester are subject to severe wear and tear. This applies to both the blades of the cutting drum and the counterblade. Krone now offers a highly wear-resistant counterblade fot the Big X, equipped with carbide blocks. This ensures consistently high quality of the chopped material and a longer service life.
The carbide is sintered tungsten carbide and cobalt, one of the hardest materials available. To ensure optimum bonding to the steel body, the carbide is applied to the specially designed steel body using a special soldering process. Individual carbide blocks are soldered along the cutting edge and these blocks ensure that the cutting tools remain sharp.
This carbide tipping delays the rounding process many times over compared to a conventional counterblade. This also has a positive effect on the blades which remain sharp for longer and ensure a long-lasting chop quality when used with different crops. Additional carbide blocks prevent the surface of the counterblade from being eroded, also contributing to improving its service life.
Increasing service life
When the counterblade is used in grass or for cutting GPS, the abrasive stress is higher and the counterblade is subject to greater wear than in maize. Krone therefore recommends the following method of use: After initial use in maize, the same side of the counterblade should then be used in grass and GPS. Then the side of the counterblade can be changed so that it can be used first in maize and then again in grass and GPS. This ensures that the cutting edge wears down very evenly, resulting in an extremely long service life over several harvest years.
Hence, the use of carbide significantly increases the service life of both the counterblade and the chopping drum blades, thereby ensuring high chop quality for the various crops. Thanks to the long replacement intervals for the cutting tools, assembly times and associated costs are also reduced.
