AGCO’s IDEAL Combine To Make North American Debut At 2018 Canada’s Farm Progress Show

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Growers will get their first chance to see AGCO’s upcoming IDEAL combine on North American soil at the 2018 Canada’s Farm Progress Show June 20 to 22. (Photo courtesy of AGCO.)

AGCO’s upcoming IDEAL combine will make its first appearance in North America at the 2018 Canada’s Farm Progress Show scheduled for June 20 to 22 in Regina, Saskatchewan. Available for public viewing at AGCO’s lot (No. 8103), the IDEAL was designed with automated operation in mind and features what AGCO says is the first clean-sheet design for a combine in 30 years. AGCO says it invested six years of “vigorous” testing into developing the IDEAL.

Meeting Needs

AGCO, which owns the Challenger, Fendt, GSI, Massey Ferguson, and Valtra brands, conducted extensive interviews with growers around the world in developing the IDEAL. Caleb Schleder, AGCO tactical marketing manager for combines, says AGCO built roughly 50 prototypes and tested them in its lab and the field in various global growing conditions. “IDEAL has been an immense project,” he says. “The result is a machine that is designed to harvest all grain crops and operate in nearly all conditions.”

The IDEAL will be available in Class 7, 8, and 9 models, thus ensuring “the right capacity to maximize harvest for all operations,” AGCO states. Among the combine’s features is an all-new approach to automation that “blends harvesting performance benchmarks and necessary combine settings” to ease harvesting for expert operators and improve harvesting efficiency for new operators.

Real-Time Visualization

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AGCO says it invested six years conducting research and interviews with growers throughout the world as part of the development of its new IDEAL combine. (Photo courtesy of AGCO.)

The IDEAL will enable operators to monitor and adjust harvesting settings via an iPad app, and an IDEALharvest system will provide an “unprecedented, real-time visualization of crop flow” from within the combine via a “special grain-quality camera” operators can monitor wirelessly. The combine utilizes 52 integrated sensors that help differentiate “what is grain and what is not” and guide the system to alter various settings.

The IDEAL also includes a longer Dual Helix processor that enables operation at slower, more efficient speeds, which translates to gentler handling of grain, meaning a “longer separation area and higher grain quality.” The combine’s Streamer 6.0 high-capacity unloading system, meanwhile, features a 485-bushel grain bin the combine can unload six seconds faster than competitors’ 350-bushel bins, AGCO states.

Source: AGCO

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