Podcast: Rotor Loss - Combine Adjustments to Maximize Harvest Efficiency

00:00 Is your combine costing you yield at harvest time? Answer, probably yes. We're gonna dig into how you fix it in this episode 00:09 of extreme Ag Cutting the curve. Welcome to extreme Ag Cutting the Curve podcast, where real farmers share real insights 00:16 and real results to help you improve your farming operation. This episode is brought to you by Simon Innovation, 00:23 protect your crops and maximize yield with a full lineup of innovative precision tools engineered 00:28 to enhance the efficiency and accuracy of your sprayer. Visit simon innovations.com and start getting more ROI out of your sprayer. 00:36 And now here's your host, Damien Mason. Hey there. Welcome to another fantastic episode of Extreme Ag Kevin, the curve. 00:44 I'm joined by one of the founders of Extreme Ag, Kevin Matthews, who's coming to us from his sprayer spraying late season morning glory 00:50 and bur cucumber in a corn field. He's gonna be harvesting in a month, but he's making time for you. 00:55 I've got also Brian Robertson, the founder of, uh, ESIS Performance Concaves. They add, uh, they make, uh, concaves 01:02 that you put on aftermarket on your combine. And we talked about this a little bit at one of our field days. 01:07 We talked about how to make the most outta your combine. We had a combine clinic as one of our webinars, 01:12 but this is an important subject. Uh, Kevin said before I hit the record button, you're losing about 75% of your yield. 01:18 Uh, you're losing about 75% of the loss that you have. I should say you're not losing 75% of your yield. I misspoke about 75% of the loss 01:26 that you have happens in a certain moment of the combine, meaning back in the, in guts of your combine. 01:33 And a lot of guys don't see it or they don't, uh, know how to address it. And that's what we wanna dig into here. 01:39 So a combine gets its name because it combined to cutting threshing and separation, or sometimes called winnowing, um, the cutting bar, 01:47 then the stuff in the middle, then the stuff that goes out the back. There's a lot of moving parts. How can you prevent loss? 01:54 So Brian, I'm gonna start with, uh, Kevin, because we know that you're gonna talk about what goes on in the guts. 02:00 Kevin, you've been running a combine for, since you were a kid. Um, they're better than they used to be, 02:06 but if you don't have 'em set up right, you're still losing some of the precious yield that you worked so hard to grow. 02:12 Yeah, no question. They're, they're amazing pieces of equipment now, extremely technology advanced compared with the 4,400 I started with years ago in a two 13 02:24 love bar and then a four oh point hit. But the, the thing you've got to do is, is you've got to sort out with a good even crop going into that, 02:34 into that combine. And that makes the head very important. But when we're picking corn, for instance, you, 02:42 you can have a tremendous amounts of header loss from not having proper deck plate spacing. You may have gather chain wore out, you may have deck, 02:51 you know, the, the deck plates wore out. You may be running header way too fast. You could be running it too slow, 02:57 getting butt shattered there. There's all different things that can be going on there. And so you've got to know how to really find those losses 03:06 and fine tune that combine. But the header is very critical component to identify where your problems are beginning at. 03:15 And then as we get into the machine, the biggest thing I see now is, you know, we, we run mostly John Deeres 03:22 and we're, we're also running the cloud, so this year as well. But with our John Deeres, you have many different concaves 03:31 to put inside that machine, and you got separator options for your grapes in the separator section. 03:37 And most people, I hate to say it, but they overlook it and they get out and walk and check and they say, okay, I've seen a few kernels on the ground. 03:47 We're good. Well, that's what some companies calling acceptable loss. Well, my remark is to that company employee is how much 03:57 of your paycheck is acceptable to remove from your paycheck each week? And they're going to tell you zero. Right? 04:05 But if I'm gonna buy a combine and spend that much money, that's what I expect coming out. The back is zero grand. mm-Hmm. 04:13 And that happen a hundred percent of the time. Probably not. But I'm gonna say when it's set up properly 04:19 and the right concaves in it, and a good operator, you can get that in the 99 plus percent range. 04:26 You can do a good job. And that is, that is really overlooked. When you start getting four, five, 6% loss, it adds up. 04:35 And we, we could spend an hour talking about all this. I just, uh, run the numbers. I wanna make sure I was thinking about this, right? 04:42 Uh, 4% loss on a 250 bushel corn field yield is, uh, 10 bushels. So that means you got five, that's 560 pounds of corn. 04:51 I think that's a neat way of looking at it. That's 560 pounds of corn laying out there on every acre. That's a hell of a lot. 04:59 I mean, you can say, all right, that's also at four bucks, that's, that's $40 your margin in in, 05:04 in an environment like this, your margin could be 40 bucks an acre. Uh, you're, you know, because we're obvious obviously in 05:11 skinny times, uh, Brian, Brian Robertson, um, starting up the front, okay, how do we lose yield? Uh, the real, the the, is it, you know, it's going too fast. 05:23 It shatter, uh, your, your bar misses some of the soybeans. 'cause it's cut, it's cutting too high. 05:29 I mean, there's all kinds of ways I I've seen it happen. But you're the expert. I'm not. 05:34 Yeah. So like Kevin said, it starts with the head, and if you don't have that head set right, you're gonna have what we call header loss. 05:42 So what he mentioned, it's too fast, too slow. Um, if your deck plates are worn out like in corn or whatever it may be, and 05:52 By the way, I don't know what a deck plate does, uh, Kevin, what's a deck plate do and how does it get worn out? So the deck plate is what actually snap it, it, well, 06:01 you got snapping rollers, the rollers pull the stalk down, and then the deck plates are sitting there 06:08 and it basically is a orifice. It's only gonna allow so much material through, and you want it so that, that, that ear corn hits in 06:16 between in the deck plates. But yet you don't want wide enough that you create what we call butt shelling because of the kernels splatters. 06:22 So the deck plates is part of the separation of the sphere from the stalk. And Damon, the point of setting the deck plates right, is 06:32 because you don't wanna pull the whole plant into the combine. You want the ears coming in 06:37 and as little other material as possible because the more other, more of the plant that you pull in, the more the combine is congested with stuff other than 06:50 the ears and trying to thresh it. So the more stuff that comes in the machine, the harder it is for the machine to thresh the material 07:00 and separate it more importantly. Okay. Which means separation means that getting it in the machine. 07:06 Okay, so we talked about is that, you said head loss is, um, your, 07:10 your cutter's moving too fast, your reel's moving too fast. I mean, I'm thinking what's moving too fast 07:14 that causes header and then also if your height is wrong, that's where you lose it at the 07:17 header. So those are the two ways. Any, any of it, any of it is common. And a lot of times it's operator error. 07:24 They're just not taking the time to set it accordingly to the conditions that you're in. Got it. Yeah. 07:31 And something else that I see is they don't take the time to set. You need to set your header speed relative to 07:39 how fast you're running the combine. So some guys will try to run it at five, six miles an hour in third gear, and the head's too slow 07:49 and you're pushing the corn over. A lot of guys don't set the speed of the header relative to their ground speed. 07:58 And that's a pretty common, uh, problem that people do. So, by the way, how do I know this? I'm not doing this all just based on what feels good. 08:07 That surely to God, these manufacturers, they're selling you an $800,000 combine. They probably have instructions 08:14 that says if you're going three and a half miles per hour, your, your headers should be set up like this. 08:19 If you're going four, if your yield is 250 bushel corn versus 150, there's all kinds of parameters here. 08:26 If I'm going through 150 bushel corn, it's gonna be a hell of a lot different setup or speed 08:31 for sure than there's a 250 bushel corn. I'm not just doing this based on how I feel that day. Am I? Well, you, you know, your operator's manual is a, 08:39 is a starting point, but at the end of the day, Damien, the industry does a poor job of, of teaching. 08:47 And the reason that is, is those that in, in the industry has not had the opportunities to get out and run the combines like the farmer does. 08:55 Yeah. And, and a real good technician will tell you that if I could have some of the hours that operator has in that machine, I could, I could be a much better technician. 09:07 And that's one thing that I gotta give Brian credit for or Estes credit for, was they actually bought their own machine 09:14 and put it in the field and ran and ran countless hours on it and learned those sweet spots and how to set it 09:22 and what makes it different so they could teach their customers so they would've a good experience 09:28 and others do that as well. But it, it just stands out as I've watched the, the, the depthness that they put into the research 09:38 behind the products, Brian. Okay. We talked about the header loss. So really what I just heard from Kevin is it's not like you 09:47 just told everybody do this because it's gonna vary based on the crop you're harvesting the quantity per, per acre. 09:54 Yeah. And then also the speed that you're able to go, uh, Matt Miles, if it's one of those wet falls 09:59 or wet summers, he's gonna be going slower, presumably because of ground conditions. Or maybe Kelly Gere's gonna have to be going slower 10:06 because of the hills he is in versus somebody that's in flat and dry. I mean, there's a lot of variables. 10:12 Exactly. And it, it, like Kevin said, it's just time in the seat. And a lot of operators, good operators go by fill, um, 10:21 they don't really go by the book per se because there's so many different variables, like you said. Um, so that's, you know, there's, 10:30 there's header loss and then when it gets pulled into the machine, then you get into, um, 10:37 what we call rotor loss or separator loss that goes out the back of the machine. So that one, 10:44 You've, and by the way, you even have some numbers on that. So I want to go ahead and just bait the listener. 10:48 You have some numbers, some actual data. Kevin already used 4%, which is the number I latched onto. And that, like I said, if you're pushing high yields, 10:56 that comes to a fairly a, a big amount of using corn, but 4% on soybeans, I can run the same numbers. You're throwing a lot of pounds back out there in your 11:04 field, which I guess you can say is seeding cover crop, but it's also, it's also eroding away your, uh, your, your margins in a pretty skinny year. 11:12 So, alright, talk to me about, and then rotor loss. Okay. So if you wanna start with the figures just on a, uh, a thousand acres of corn, thousand acres 11:24 of soybeans and a thousand acres a week, just as a general, and if you do 10,000 acres, multiply it by 10, 11:31 but you're losing on just rotor loss 25,000 a year. That, is that a dollar amount or is that a bushel amount? That's 11:41 A, that's a dollar amount. Okay. Yeah. 25,000 and that, and these are, these are not figures that I'm just back of the envelope. 11:51 These are what we've tested and seen. Okay, so if I farmed 3000 acres and that was a mix between one, one third corn, 11:57 one third soy, one third wheat, you just did that because you wanna make sure you're giving a, uh, an example that a lot of almost every farmer grow crop farmer 12:05 or broad acre farmer can relate to. Kevin, before we, uh, get to Kevin, I want to so ask you came up with that because you trialed that 12:13 and you said, and that's because I don't have things set up from the front to the back. Correct. And, 12:20 and that's, that's grain loss that we've counted that is combination of, of, um, actually the way we did that trial, it's, 12:30 that's mainly rotor loss. Um, one of the ways Kevin probably knows, but if you want to know if you're having header loss 12:37 or rotor loss, one of the easiest things you can do is raise your chopper and drop it in Windrow. 12:43 And if you drop it in Windrow, it's kind of like at the Farm progress show, when you drop it in Windrow, everything 12:49 that's coming outta the rotor gets dropped. Right. Like in a windrow. And you can go out there and look through it 12:56 and you can easily tell what the loss was from the rotor. Anything on the outside of 13:02 that windrow would be header loss. So it's, it's pretty easy to tell if you raise that chopper, what your rotor loss is 13:11 and what your header loss is. Okay. So that number you just gave me there, that was, by the way, that's gonna vary with the price 13:19 of the, of the commodity. Uh, correct. I mean, you, you gave me $25,000. Did is that in today's commodity prices? 13:27 That's, that's today's prices. Okay, So that's eight bucks an acre, right? Mm-Hmm. $25,000 over, it's about eight bucks. 13:37 A little over eight bucks an acre, right? Yeah. Okay. Now in the scope of things, a guy like Kevin's gonna tell me, I've got a hell of a lot 13:46 of dollars invested in every acre. Maybe that $8 is something I just have to have acceptable loss 13:54 because it's not as bad as we thought where it's, you know, four or 5%, eight bucks an acre, 13:59 he's got eight bucks an acre blowing in the window a lot of different ways. So you, you, I guess you should address that. 14:05 The big thing Damien, is, you know, there is no acceptable officer. I preach it, preach it, preach it, 14:10 and uh, I I'm just not happy. That's something I can control. That's something I can do better 14:14 and that's what I'm, that's what I'm gonna do as a farmer. But you know, there's so many things that affect it 14:20 that are overlooked and, you know, proper installment of your concave, whether they're OEMs or whether they're, um, you know, 14:28 or ever you choose to use, you know, Brian talked about running too much fodder through the machine by not having your hair set right. 14:36 Even when you have the best amount of going through, it still is a ton of work to separate that crop. And having those, uh, separator grapes 14:46 that Brian has designed with those disruptors in there has been a game changer for us. And you know, the, the beauty of the way that 14:57 crop feeds into that concave for this new design, you're running so much slower and the RPMs of the rotor, you know, typically you're going 15:07 to, you can do two 70 on your rotor and 24% corn and do a phenomenal job. Whereas before I would be running three 80 to four oh 15:19 and that's a lot of diesel fuel, a lot of horsepower. And then at the integrity of the grain that you get from that slower speed. 15:27 Same for soybeans. If you grow, we grew seed beans for several years and with running the feed accelerator in low speed, 15:37 that is another plus that you do with this concave is the only time you would run it in high speed is possibly in wheat. 15:46 And I don't even know that that's necessary all the time, Brian, to talk more about that. 15:51 But the slower the speeds that's needed to brush this crop, the less fuel you're gonna burn. 15:58 And I like that. And the better grain quality and the store will of that grain is tremendous. And something that goes off that, Kevin, 16:06 the faster you're running your rotor, the faster you're moving the material through the machine and the less time you're giving it to separate, 16:15 which also contributes to the rotor loss. Okay. Alright. So rotor loss is where you, you think most of the, well, it seems 16:23 to me there's an awful big chance of losing upfront, right? I mean, if you're, you talking about the, 16:28 your reel's moving too fast, your, your grain head's tilted wrong. I mean, there's a lot of stuff you can, 16:33 you're driving four miles an hour through a field upfront. I can knock down stuff. 16:37 I mean, I can do a, I can do a lot of damage before it ever gets into the rotor, right, Brian? You can do some damage, 16:46 but you have to remember the, the crop is whole at that point. So like the ears are whole, so as long as you're getting 16:51 that ear in the machine Yeah. Which 99% of the time you are, or 99.9% of the time you are getting the ear in, 16:59 then it's all up to the machine and the, the concaves and the separator to get that threshed and out into the machine. 17:08 Um, so, you know, we talked about $25,000 that is attributable to rotor loss. That's with, uh, your traditional round bar concaves. 17:22 And that's what most people run with our system. We get it down to about a 10th of that. So just by the effectiveness of that, you know, 25 grand, 17:34 you don't wanna lose that. But if you can pay, uh, a small amount and get that down 90%, why wouldn't you do it? 17:44 And, and that's only talking about one factor, that's only talking about rotor loss. And what Kevin had mentioned that people don't think about 17:53 is, is loss contributable to fines and splits. Yep. That ends up in the grain tank, which you can see, you can turn around and see, 18:03 or when you can, you're on the combine, you can pull a sample in your hand, you can see the fines and splits. 18:09 But beyond that is the hidden, um, loss that people really don't think about. And that's what ends up in the grain bin 18:17 after drying or the next season. And we've had guys, uh, we've had customers haul out 50 truckloads, finds less from, 18:29 from going from OEM to, uh, our system and 50 truckloads, well put it this way, 20 truckloads is a hundred grand. 18:39 Mm-Hmm. So It, it, well, so the answer is on the stuff inside the rotor, which is a lot of complexity, there's a lot of moving parts. 18:48 I was with you at the Brom prior show, we opened up the combine, it's overwhelming all the belts and all the moving parts, all that. 18:54 Your first answer when we, to the person listening to this says, okay, what am I supposed to do? You're gonna say, well put in estas performance concaves XPR 19:01 threes, which is our new version, and they're gonna say, well, is it, is that all there is to it? 19:05 Because, you know, this sounds a little, it sounds like maybe it is too easy of a fix. There's more to it than that. 19:10 Kevin, what else do I need to do to prevent rotor loss? Well, you gotta have that. You gotta have that concave installed properly. 19:17 It's gotta be level from front to back. It's extremely critical. You need to have the separator grate set correctly. 19:26 Uh, when you put 'em in. You wanna make sure you have the proper clearance. You also need to make sure that your tins on your rotor 19:32 and your RAs bars on your rotor are in good shape because you can have a perfect concave and a perfect separator grate. 19:39 But if those tides are worn, then it is not doing properly. Another thing is, you gotta remember how a rotor works. 19:48 A rotor is not like a cylinder machine. A rotor works thrashing grain on grain and we're brown and the guys, his team has got this slower rotor speed. 20:01 It allows more time for that rotor to stay full to where it's thrashing grain on grain. And that is how he's reducing all the, the fines 20:11 and reducing the crack damage because it's a cushion, it's a softer surface for the drain to go through. 20:20 But the biggest thing I like outside of that is something we haven't talked about is the, the broad settings that you've got with this, 20:33 the versatility is so much easier for the operator to find that sweet spot with this system versus our standard OEM 20:42 where you're constantly having to adjust and try to get this right and that. Right. And that is the one thing that's 20:49 so good is when you get a inexperienced operator in there, you can set that machine 20:56 and you can get it pretty darn good. It may not be perfect across every little situation the operator runs in, 21:05 but it's a lot easier to train a guy or a lady to run that machine with this set of concave and separator grapes in and do a decent quality job 21:15 and yet not run, run out on the ground. If we can get it in the tank, we can do something about it, but if we're run out the back, it's over. Right, 21:23 Right, right, right. Okay, so, so the one thing I just heard right there is a couple things. 21:27 First off, if I use an Estes concave, I can turn my rotor slower and therefore the the grain is being threshed up against other 21:39 grain versus knocking into metal which pro which reduces grain damage? Brian, is that what I heard? 21:45 Yes, that's correct. Okay. And I can set rotor speed, I don't know, I haven't run a combine. I've sat in them, but hell, I haven't run a combine, 21:53 I don't run combines. Can I, can I sit up there in a cab and reduce rotor speed? So with the rotor speed, you can road, like Kevin said, 22:00 run his rotor at 2 70, 2 80 versus three 80 or 400 early on. You know, that's a difference of 30% 22:10 reduction in rotor speed. And by doing that, you're gonna have more grain on grain action. You're gonna be able to keep that rotor more full. 22:21 And by doing that, you're gonna have less grain damage. Also, by running it slower, you're keeping it in the rotor longer, giving you more time to separate it. 22:33 Okay. What about then, uh, beyond the concaves, where am I losing and how do I prevent it? So the non-obvious place that, 22:45 that you're losing it is, we mentioned that you see the fines and the splits when you're harvesting, 22:53 but when you take that and put it into the bin, whether you're drying it down or you're harvesting it 15, 16% 23:02 and you're just putting it in the bin, when that is dried down and you go to move that grain, the amount of fines 23:10 that are left after you empty that bin is lost. And that is not something that you see initially because if you're harvesting at 20, 23%, 23:24 the the hairline cracks are there, but you may not see them once you dry it down to 15, 14% as that kernel uh, contracts 23:36 and dries out, those hairline splits become big splits and that turns into fines. Alright. Brian, obviously as a concave company is as easy 23:46 as changing a concave and I prevent a whole bunch of that rotor loss. I mean, this can't, it, it, that's, it's, 23:51 that sounds too good to be true. There's a little bit more than that. No question about it. 23:55 And you know, you gotta have the proper install, you gotta have the proper operator. And, you know, the, 24:01 the one thing if we've not talked about is, we touched on it a little bit, but I wanna emphasize this. If you've ever took those heavy small wire con out 24:12 for small grain, you'll remember this. But this system you do not have to remove once you put your conc in, all you need 24:23 to do is your general maintenance and check your levelness of it and make sure that they're inspected 24:29 and you've not done no damage during this harvest season. You do not remove 'em from crop to crop 24:35 unless you just wanna do an inspection. That is a lot of money and time saved right there. The grain quality is second 24:43 to none is what I've seen with it. It's amazing. The, the user friendliness and the operations is much simpler. 24:53 You don't have to just constantly fine tune, fine tune, fine tune. And I will tell you, a lot of people get frustrated. 25:01 They get it set, they just run and they wanna get your crop in, but there's a lot of money put on the ground. 25:07 And so really the attention to detail and the perfection that you can put into the harvest with this set up has been second to none 25:16 with everything I've ran and I have run a lot of machines and a lot of different stuff. 25:21 Right. But the quality is superb. Got it. All right. Brian, by the way, there's three times he said make sure that they're level. 25:29 How the hell does a piece of, of a, does a concave inside of a combine get so out of level? 25:35 I'm trying to figure that out, out What happens? Well, a lot of times whenever they set it up, um, they'll check the level, 25:42 but they won't do necessary steps to make sure it's level. So you need to cycle the concaves as you're leveling. 25:50 You need to cycle the con meaning run the concave all the way close to all the way open, um, and check it. 25:57 And then, you know, halfway through season or midway or sometime during season, uh, recheck it because you have to remember the combine is going 26:07 through a lot of times really rough fields and it's the same as anything. It's kind of like toe straps you're putting on your trailer. 26:15 They were tight when you left, but as you're running down the road, all that vibration and stuff, stuff can kind of adjust themselves 26:22 or work themselves in and, and you need to check it periodically. And it's a, it's a quick check. 26:27 It doesn't, you know, you can check it with a, with an Allen wrench pretty quick. So it's just something that helps 26:34 because if your concave isn't level, the reason it's important is you may not be running the same clearance 26:42 all the way across the concave. Meaning if the front of the concave is say 10 millimeters and your back of your concave is 13 millimeters, 26:53 but your, your crop is getting threshed and the crop is getting reduced, well the rear of the concave is further away from the rotor, 27:03 meaning less friction, less threshing, and you're gonna lose it. So it, it is, it is very important 27:10 and I'm glad that Kevin has mentioned it and emphasized it because it's very important. 27:16 It's very important with all systems, but you know, particularly, um, with, with ours, just because if you want that maximum performance, you, 27:27 you need to have a level. All right Kevin, you've got, uh, you, you've got the point that it's not just stuff that you, okay, 27:36 you lose it up the front, maybe you knock it over, it doesn't get in the head, you lose yield going out the back 27:41 because it's happening mostly in the rotor. That's where, uh, Brian says most of the loss happens. But there's another thing that happens even if the grain 27:48 gets into your hopper, but it's damaged, that ends up costing you yield because you get docked doesn't store well, it, it, 27:56 it ends up, uh, becoming dust or whatever. So just address that as our last point about how we can prevent yield loss at the combine. 28:05 Yes. That is very critical. You know, the biggest thing is you gotta get outta the combine and you gotta check 28:12 and you can't assume that your loss monitors are a hundred percent right, because they have 28:16 to be calibrated based on field conditions. So you gotta get out and check. And one reason we wanna talk about the difference in the 28:24 header loss and separator loss is the header loss is easy. You get out of the combine right there, 28:28 and the, the thro, the fodder has not been spread out over it. So you can see if there's s on the ground or 28:34 or soybeans on the ground, but in the back nobody wants to get down on their hands, knees and dig down. 28:42 And what I have our er cart guy do is he's always constantly riding right beside the standing corn and looking 28:50 and then the soybeans. And if he sees soybeans or corn grow over in that unharvested area, I can promise you it'd come out of the back of that combine. 29:00 Yeah. Right. So that's an easy way to have a second set of eyes is to let that a cart driver understand that his job not only is his job to keep 29:11 that machine running efficiently and the truck's rolling, but it is also to be a second set of eyes 29:16 and ears out there in the field as to what kind of job that operator's doing in that combine. And the help is very appreciated by the operator. 29:25 Got it. All right, Brian, uh, is your combine cost? You yield answer most likely. You've done a bunch of experiments, 29:32 you've done it there everywhere. What's the worst you've seen and what's the best you've seen? 29:36 In other words, did you, did you help somebody out and you're like, do you realize you're losing 8% of your, your yield? 29:41 Did you ever have that bad experience? Uh, we've seen worse. Um, I've seen up in Indiana actually a guy, Hey, 29:50 Wait a minute, wait a minute. Let's start talking about these Indiana people. Yeah. So this was a couple years ago 29:56 and a guy had some problem corn, it had some disease and the cog was real rubbery and it was hard to thresh. 30:08 Um, and with with, uh, with the round bars he had been running, um, he was losing like 10 bushels an acre, 20 bushels an acre. 30:21 And a neighbor of his brought our system over, brought his machine over with our combat, brought his machine over with our system in it 30:31 and was running and he was, he was losing like half a bushel. And that farmer that day said that he had put enough 30:41 corn on the ground in that one field to buy two of our systems. Right, right, right. So your combine's 30:48 costing you yield and you say answer. Most likely you've learned a lot on this whole front. So, um, besides the concave, there's a whole bunch 30:54 of stuff from the front to the back of the combine, I guess is the big takeaway. Absolutely. Get your butt outta that cab 31:00 and check it out every once in a while on the ground. Do a power shut down, shut it down with a separator, full, get out, check everything, see where the grain's at, 31:11 see if you're getting it off the here and if you, if you're unsure where to set your con at, get you a set of calipers and keep in there. 31:19 Or if you don't wanna spend that kind of money, you can get 'em about six to eight bucks, 20 bucks, however fancy you want 'em, 31:26 grab a branch outta your toolbox. You got 18 millimeter rich, stick it around in that corn top. 31:31 It's 18 millimeter corn top. You know where to set your, your clearance at on your rotor, uh, you know, on your con cave. 31:39 So there's a lot of cheat sheets out there. And just keep it simple. And, and Kevin, one important thing 31:46 that we didn't mention was zeroing your con caves. So if you, if you see it, if you see it at 18, but your zero is, 31:56 say you zeroed it when the concave was six millimeters away, well then you're actually at 24 millimeters. 32:03 Very good point. I forgot that. Very good point. Absolutely critical. Don't assume that that meter says it's, if the meter says zero in the combine, don't assume 32:13 that's correct if you hadn't level Yeah, you need to check it leveling. And if you go through the, the, 32:18 they've done a really good job preparing an instruction sheet and if you, if you do the steps correctly, you'll measure that and you'll zero that 32:28 calibration out during the process. And he's a hundred percent right Damien, that gets overlooked. 32:35 Got it. His name's Kevin Matthews, he's founder of Extreme Ag. He's coming to you from the field. 32:39 He's joined by Brian Robertson, founder of Assist Performance Concaves. Uh, their new XPR three concaves are out 32:46 and uh, Kevin will be running them this fall is as his harvest is just commencing and I'm guessing he'll probably shoot a video 32:53 and tell you how they're working for him. So till next time, thanks for being here. That's Brian. That's Kevin. I'm Damien. 32:58 This is Extreme Acts behind the curve. That's a wrap for this episode of Cutting the Curve. Make sure to check out Extreme ag.farm 33:04 for more great content to help you squeeze more profit out of your farming operation. 33:09 Cutting the curve is brought to you by Simon Innovations. Don't let your sprayers limitations hold you back. 33:15 Visit simon innovations.com and upgrade your sprayer's capabilities now.