Featuring a new hood design with strengthened drive and further technical improvements, Claas’ latest generation maize pickers in the Rovio 4 series now bring even greater productivity, lower losses and enhanced chopping quality to the maize harvest.
Within the Rovio 4 series, Claas has added a next-generation maize picker with six, eight and 12 rows to its range of front attachments for Evio, Trion and Lexion which replaces the previous Corio maize pickers. It has been completely re-engineered to achieve up to 30% higher throughput than its predecessor.
The linear picking rollers featuring higher rotational speed and constant throughput speed ensure that cobs are cleanly picked without loss under all harvesting conditions. With only negligible amounts of residual crop entering the combine harvester, separation and cleaning is reduced to a minimum.
The four bolt-on knives per picking roller have a wear-resistant tungsten carbide coating. Increased overload protection for the picking gearbox and intake roller enables higher crop volumes to be processed.
The redesigned hood tips with a flat operating angle of 17 degrees ensure gentle crop handling even under difficult conditions or when cornering, and allow higher ground speeds.
Furthermore, the innovative hood design is suitable for harvesting lodged maize. Lodged maize side augers are optionally available. The spacing between the picking plates can be hydraulically adjusted from the operator’s seat to suit the harvesting conditions.
The wear parts fitted in the hoods can be replaced easily if necessary and the height of the tips can be adjusted quickly without tools by means of a simple screw mechanism. The hoods can also be folded without tools. Having just one central oil chamber greatly simplifies maintenance operations.
The repositioned, integrated horizontal choppers guarantee precise, even chopping even at high ground speeds. Tungsten carbide-coated knives sharpened on three sides achieve precise, effective chopping with a low power requirement – supported by optimally coordinated feeder chain, picking roller and chopper speeds.
In the FC models, the folding times have been reduced by 33%. Furthermore, the reduced overall length of the hood tips in the FC models has eliminated the need for folding – significantly reducing setting up and transfer times.
Switching to sunflower harvesting is also quick and straightforward. All you have to do is turn the feeder chain round and then fit rigid knives to the picking plates along with side hood extensions and a raised rear wall panel. A new adapter also enables it to be mounted to the Jaguar forage harvester for harvesting whole-crop maize silage.
Auto Contour precisely and automatically adjusts the transverse and longitudinal movement of the front attachment to the ground contours detected by a sensing bracket – now mounted one row further in, enabling it to work reliably even at the crop margins.
Hydraulic rams on the feeder housing continuous adjust lateral levelling and cutting height on the basis of the information from the sensors. The required cutting height can be easily set in Cebis.
Automatic steering is provided by the integrated Auto Pilot system, which scans two rows of plants simultaneously with its central sensors and translates this input into corresponding steering movements. The electromagnetic system identifies and compensates for gaps in the crops and operates with row widths of up to 80 cm.
All Rovio 4 maize pickers are equipped with multi-couplers and automatic attachment recognition, including maintenance counter and saved cutterbar data such as end stops, Auto Contour target values and much more. This reduces the time required for attachment and setting up before use to a minimum – ensuring lightening-fast operational readiness.
