New Holland Baler, changing from sisal to plastic twine

[SHALER]

New to me NH311. Greased it up and it tied a few dozen bales flawlessly with sisal twine. Due to the big price difference between sisal and plastic I want to change over to plastic so I bought some and tried it out. The right side knotter continued to perform flawlessly, but the left side knotter had a problem. And that problem was that the knot hung up on the bill hook every time.. I flipped the knotter assembly up and attempted to file down the "hook" on the end of the billhook, but I did not make much progress on that. Later after I was away from the baler, I looked in the operator manual and there are 5 possible causes, the one that could make sense is "Too much tension on billhook cam". That adjustment is just a few turns of a screw. Anyway , anyone here using a NH baler switched over from sisal to plastic and needed to adjust the billhook to keep knots from hanging?

 

[Fixingfarmer]

We got some small square bales with that cheap blue twine a month or so ago and several of them broke under the weight of what was obviously baled a bit wet. If that’s what the knotters liked I’d leave it alone and maybe price shop the old twine. It can get close to the poly although probably not as cheap as the thinnest blue crap. And if your baling it for sale who cares. Our old round baler used some of the orange heavy stuff that was thicker it held together fine.

 

[ET]

Is the twine knife sharp? The wiper arm should contact the bill hook lightly to scrape the knot off.

 

[urbancase]

I have a 310 and have the same problem, fixed mine with a sharp knife. If it not cut clean it will hang on.

 

[Tom in TN]

I have a NH 273 baler, not a 311. On the 273 there are two different billhooks for sisal versus twine. I don't know what the difference is since I only use sisal twine, but it might be worth looking into on the 311 baler.

 

[caterpillar guy]

I don't know a thing about square balers or knotters .I do know there is a big difference in the twin from round balers at 20,000 ft rolls to the 9,000 ft rolls for square balers and even bigger twine for the big square balers. Using the wrong twine will make bales that break easily or twine might not cut off well.

 

[DanielW]

That's a very common occurrence when changing to plastic. In general, sisal isn't quite as picky about the knotters being adjusted perfectly/tuned. The wiper arm often has to be adjusted (bent) so it scrubs the bill hook a little closer - the gap gets wider as it wears. The plastic is usually just a little thinner and more slippery, so if the wiper isn't nice and close it will just slip over the plastic rather than push it off the hook. The knife has to be sharp (should be the case no matter what - a dull knife causes lots of grief). The Rasspe knotters used by New Holland, Deere, and others have different billhooks available for plastic vs. sisal, but usually you can make either work. The hook for sisal has a slightly shorter knub if I remember right, to let it slip off easier. You can also play around with the billhook jaw spring tension to not hold it so tightly.

If I were you, I wouldn't worry about changing the billhooks or playing with the jaw tension just yet: Adjust the wiper arm to scrub the bottom of the billhooks closely and make sure the knives are sharp and go from there. Chances are that will be all you need.

 

[DanielW]

Further to my last post: I assume you're using the right grade for square balers? You want 7200 or 9000 at most. Any thinner and it just won't work. A small ag supplier up the road sells some wacky non-standard thicknesses: One of them is 11000. A guy I used to help haying used the 11000 in his square baler, but even that was just too thin/weak.

 

[Jim.ME]

Further to my last post: I assume you're using the right grade for square balers? You want 7200 or 9000 at most. Any thinner and it just won't work. A small ag supplier up the road sells some wacky non-standard thicknesses: One of them is 11000. A guy I used to help haying used the 11000 in his square baler, but even that was just too thin/weak.

11000 seems like an odd number, at least around here, however the tensile strength number would tell the strength part of the story. 7200 and 9000 are common footages in a packaging of baler twine. With poly twine there should be a second number which is the tensile/knot strength of the twine and will generally affect the diameter of the twine. Square balers should run a higher tensile strength twine than round bales, due to the wrapping of the bale differences and handling requirements.

9000/130 is a common poly twine used for small squares around here. Some 7200/170 poly is also around. For a square baler you should be looking for a tensile strength of 130 to 170, footage of the twine ball is controlled by the size that will fit in the twine box on the baler.

Most twine round balers are using 20000/110 for poly twine around here.