Herbert’s Air Separation Harvester has been designed to separate lightweight crop from clods and stony soil and can be retro fitted onto almost any used trailer harvester.
Having been approached by a customer who was looking for a better way to harvest bulbs from his stony land, Herbert Engineering set about finding an efficient and cost-effective solution to the problem. Although renowned in the agricultural industry for designing new solutions, on this occasion Herbert opted to update existing technology, which they had originally designed in the 1980s.
The original idea was to use an air blast to remove stones, clods and other debris while harvesting root crops, and it attracted considerable interest 25 years or so ago. The decision to re-develop this Air Separation Unit was made when one of Herbert’s design team remembered working on a machine of this type in the 1980s, and felt it would be the ideal solution to the problem of stony soil. Herbert added the Air Separation Unit to a much modified trailed potato harvester for the customer who had made the initial enquiry, and the unit can be retro fitted onto almost any used trailer harvester.
Whilst the crop is lifted, it also separates the dry tops and shale, which are removed with the exhaust air from the fan system, providing effective removal of good crop from both stony soil and waste product. The first machine is currently being used for harvesting bulbs, but the air separation system is already attracting interest from onion growers and it could also be suitable for harvesting parsnips and carrots. One of the attractions is that it could significantly reduce the cost of labour needed for picking-off stones and other rubbish by hand, and in some situations it could avoid the need for destoning.
Steven Skipper, Herbert’s agricultural sales manager believes that this is a very efficient system, which in many ways was ahead of it’s time when first designed in the early 1980s. This was because the air system absorbed about 70hp, and this would have pushed the harvester’s total power requirement towards the 200hp mark, available on only a minority of farms at that time but now a popular tractor size.