CRAIG McCallum had about 20 seconds to get out of the cabin and assess the situation before he knew the six-year-old 9770 John Deere harvester he'd just been driving was a goner. He just sat down and watched it burn.
That particular machine had caught fire seven or eight times the same day on Milton Downs, between Wee Waa and Bellata, grinding its way through 39,000 hectares of chickpeas.
And a grind it was, the time spent blowing the machine down and actual harvesting was split about 50-50. There was a water truck tailing the harvester the whole time.
The crop was dusty, with a dry finish and virtually no rain to rinse it down.
“Without auto steer you would have been stuffed,” he said. “You couldn’t see where you were going at night when the wind dropped.
“It caught fire, and we spent about three quarters of an hour washing it down, I’d been going about 15 minutes and it was dark and a light breeze was blowing away from the machine, so you couldn’t smell smoke.
“Then the front stopped working and smoke came past the cabin.”
It was 7.30pm and the machine "caught fire properly".
By 8pm it had been reduced to a blackened mess of scrap metal, sitting in the middle of a paddock.
The following morning Mr McCallum called Horsham Hydraulics, in Victoria.
He’d heard about a fan system the company had at prototype stage and wanted to know how it worked.
Upon being filled in about how it worked, by proprietor Richard Nagorcka, Mr McCallum made a trip to Horsham to take a look at one operating.
He came away convinced if that system had been installed on the header he was working on the night of the fire, it would not have caught fire in the first place.
And so now McMCCallum and Mr Nagorcka find themselves at the forefront of taking a new Australian piece of machinery to market.
It's a grassroots approach, they’re taking it across the country, a demonstration unit fitted into a trailer will cross three states to show harvester owners firsthand how it works. Mr Nagorcka said it’s a six-outlet manifold that constantly blows air into potential hot spots on harvesters, such as the manifolds and the exhausts, plus other areas where dust can build up. He said farmers having trouble with fires while cropping lentils and chickpeas in Victoria – Chris and Frank Burchell – had approached him and had “opened a can of worms”.
The brothers advanced some good ideas about how to combat the problem.
Knowing there was a fan manufacturer in Horsham that specialises in air seeder components, Small Air, Mr Nagorcka got hold of a fan that would do the job, running the blower system.
That was the easy part.
He then designed a system that piggy backs on harvesters’ existing hydraulics and worked out how to plumb it in. Fitting it onto the hydraulics meant designing a custom valve and then finding a manufacturer for it. Denmark’s Danfoss fitted the bill and two weeks ago Mr Nagorcka received a prototype, tested it, was happy and has now ordered his first batch.
The entire system took him six months to design and get ready for market.
In the cab it consists of a rev counter, an on/off switch and there’s an alert buzzer if the revs drop too low.
Like most good engineering solutions it’s not overly complicated, “there’s six nozzles fitted with diffusers”, he said. “Going on trials last year I’m very confident this is a solution to harvester fires.” He said during harvest last year there were about six machines fitted with prototypes and “that took us to development stage”.
With this thing fitted you can concentrate on the job, you’re definitely better looking out the front than the back.
- Craig McCallum
He said now the fan system could be fitted to any harvester, but he said fitting it was more complicated on some than others.
John Deere machines require an extra pump, he said. Mr Nagorcka laughs when asked why manufacturers hadn’t thought to integrate such fans in their machines.
“I don’t think they have as many problems overseas,” he said, “in a lot of other cropping countries they’re trying to harvest before snow starts falling.”
There have been discussions with insurance companies, but it is unsure whether the fans will enable premium or excess discounts.
“There has been a lot of trouble with people trying to get insurance, there’s only a couple of underwriters prepared to do it,” he said.
One of Mr Nagorcka’s supporters is certainly Mr McCallum, who is convinced the fans would have saved the machine he was working on when it caught fire.
“This is something that can give you peace of mind,” said Mr McCallum.
“It’s not a cooling system, but it blasts air where dust can potentially settle.
“It can offer you some peace of mind, normally you’re smelling the air, trying to detect burning smoulders, and looking over your shoulder all the time.
“With this thing fitted you can concentrate on the job, you’re definitely better looking out the front than the back,” said Mr McCallum.
During July, Mr Nagorcka and Mr McCallum are taking the new machine on the road. They’ve set up a demonstration model on the back of a tandem trailer and are starting at Horsham, coming up the Newell Highway through NSW and then on into Queensland. They will be stopping at Moree, Goondiwindi, Dalby, Roma, St George, Walgett, Coonamble, Warren and Condobolin. There will be less formal stops along the way, by request.
Phone Mr McCallum on 0407 564 584 or Mr Nagorcka on 0412 784 366.