An alternative approach to cane harvester design: An initial review of the Massey Ferguson 405

At the time of its development, the Massey Ferguson 405 prototype incorporated new concepts in harvester design with respect to cane gathering and feeding, chopper design and cleaning system design. Fifteen years after the termination of Massey Ferguson's involvement in cane harvester research and development, and the mothballing of the 405 prototypes, limited comparative testing has been undertaken to assess the potential of some of the different concepts incorporated in the machine's design. In 1997, trials were undertaken to assess mechanisms associated with the feed of green cane into harvesters. In these trials, a recent model Austoft 7000 and the MF 405 were instrumented with video and data logging equipment to capture the processes of cane feeding into the machines and to measure physical parameters associated with the feed of cane. Replicated trials were conducted on the two machines to gain data under identical operating conditions. In addition to the video data and quantitative data recorded on the loadings on various machine components, output parameters such as billet quality and dirt levels in the harvested cane were also monitored. Using Massey Ferguson internal reports, this paper briefly reviews both the rationale behind the development of the 405 and the machine-crop interactions the designers considered, as they chose to depart so radically from the 'industry standard' design. The performance of the machine in the trials is then compared to these goals. Despite the age of the prototype, the data indicate that a philosophy of optimising machine-crop interactions can minimise many of the agronomic problems currently being identified as relating to the harvester, without detriment to overall machine performance.