I'm a bit unclear on how the thresher and screens process incoming grains. Perhaps a flow chart of some kind might help? One the corresponds to the combine harvester process.

Hi, I'm Dan and I will be intermittently contributing, as spring is here and I have many projects and farming to do. I will try to answer questions or ideas reliably, but I hope to manage my time so I don't spend too much on the internet this year. I have a farm and shop where I build new machines and fix old ones and modify as people request.

A thresher system isn't all as complicated as it sounds. The tricky bit will be controlling airflow through the system. The basic premise is that the stalks come in and get beaten until the grain falls off. Big screens capture the straw and 'walk' it out over the top. Medium screen allows grain to fall through and walk chaff out (along with airflow). Then smaller screens capture the grain and let small debris (weed seeds, etc) fall to the very bottom. I am interested in a 'mini' combine, rather than a micro combine. I have an old pulltype Case model which used to cut 5 ft swath, but I am trying to modify it with a pickup head instead, for buckwheat and other crops. I would like to see something a little smaller, but not less than 4 ft cut, as that gets down to walk-behind size, which lends itself to other methods of harvest and storage that are more labor-based.

Can someone help with a bit of wiki work for the microcombine project? There is a subcategory named "combine" in the "Farm Equipment" category. I would like to move the agricultural microcombine wiki entry into the combine subcategory, but i can't quite figure out how to do that. Any assistance from someone more expert with wiki editing would be appreciated.

Eli, thanks for the wiki-assist.