Is your crimper ready for harvest?

Top 10 checks for your mill before harvest

It’s less than three months until the start of the crimping season and it’s never too early to give your Murska or Korte crimper a pre-season check-up.

At Kelvin Cave Ltd, we pride ourselves on stocking a full range of spare parts and always do our best to get people up and running as soon as we can. But even small and inexpensive on-farm repairs can cause a huge amount of downtime and inconvenience, potentially resulting in a reduction of nutritional value of the feed due to heating and moulding if it is not processed and ensiled in a timely manner.

Pre-season preventative maintenance can greatly reduce the risk of harvest stress!

Top 10 checks for your mill:

Look for play or heat in the main roller, feeder shaft and auger bearings and the top sprocket – replace if required.
Check all grease pipes are connected to bearings and are free of kinks or damage. Replacing them is cheaper and easier than replacing bearings.
Check belts for damage and replace if necessary. Consider ordering a spare set just in case.
Examine the elevator chain for excess wear and missing paddles, and adjust at the top sprocket to allow
side-to-side movement but no slack.
Make sure scrapers are not worn and are correctly aligned to the rollers.
Check alignment of belts and pulleys at the front and make sure taper locks are tight.
Check cabling, pipework and nozzles on your applicator.
Make sure the hand pump or bottle jack is keeping its pressure.
Clean magnets and empty stone trap
Check rollers are properly aligned and wearing evenly with no side-to-side movement (journal wear).

Refurbishment

If you are considering sending your machine or cassette to us for a refurbishment it would be greatly appreciated if you could book in good time to help us plan our workload and ensure its timely return.

Upgrade

If you think it could be time to upgrade your mill we may be able to offer a better part-exchange price pre-season as it will allow us to refurbish and re-sell your old machine before harvest.

Queries

If you have any queries on set-up or repair of your mill or you would like to discuss an upgrade, please speak to your representative.

You may also be interested in