Proper maintenance is essential for smooth operation and extended longevity for any machinery. Cotton pickers and cotton picker parts are no exception. Good service practices will keep cotton pickers in top condition and produce more efficient harvests.
So how often should this service occur? The answer partly depends on the type of machine and how it is used. Use the following guidelines to perform regular service for your cotton picker and cotton picker parts. For additional tips, contact your local experts at Certi-Pik, USA.
Daily Maintenance
For optimal performance throughout the day, clean and service cotton picker parts each morning and night. This can be time-consuming, but the reliable performance it encourages throughout the day is a net gain, making it well worth the extra effort.
Before and after each day’s work, complete a thorough cleaning from the top of the cotton picker to the bottom, cleaning and servicing all cotton picker parts. This should include the addition of fluids as needed, greasing parts, inspecting parts and making any necessary repairs. Never ignore minor issues, as these can quickly become major and cause additional damage to the machinery.
Finishing Touches
Once you’ve cleaned and serviced the interior cotton picker parts, move on to the exterior and the cab. Clean the lights and inspect them for proper function. Replace bulbs as needed. Then, clean the cab glass. Use a soft cloth and appropriate glass cleaner for these tasks. These finishing touches will keep cotton picker operation safer and more efficient.
Ongoing Maintenance
Even with a thorough servicing before you begin the day’s work, you may need to perform maintenance during the use of the cotton picker. It’s important to remove waste buildup as it accumulates to prevent fire hazards. Use a broom or manually remove lint and trash from the basket or bale chambers.
You may want to go ahead and clean the entire chassis area, as this will encourage optimal performance. As you clean cotton picker parts, be careful when using cleaning tools, high-pressure washers or compressed-air techniques. These can cause damage. Hand cleaning offers the advantage of reducing the chances of mechanical damage.
Manufacturer Recommendations
Of course, one of the main things that should guide your cotton picker parts service is the manufacturer’s recommended procedures. Check the recommendations for your specific make and model and follow these to achieve the best results. Check the manual for frequency of greasing and proper addition of spindle solution. Keep an eye on fuel levels, coolant and engine oil, replacing these per the recommendations from the manufacturer and based on cotton picker part performance.
Get Quality Parts
To minimize the amount of maintenance and repairs required for your cotton picker, choose quality cotton picker parts. At Certi-Pik, USA, we fabricate replacement parts for picking units and offer a broad list of specialty items and sheet metal parts for rebuilding units, including cam tracks, drumheads, spindles and spindle nuts, picker and grid bars, slip clutches, lubrication hoses, stalk lifters, idler gears, CTX scrapping plates, CTX pressure doors and more. Contact us today for the quality parts you need.
Are you new to cotton picking? Or could you use a refresher on how to properly clean your cotton picker and cotton picker parts? If so, you have come to the right place!
Here at Certi-Pik, USA, we have decades of experience in producing high-quality cotton picker parts, and servicing and repairing them as well. We’ve seen time and time again how not properly cleaning and taking care of your cotton picker can cause some serious problems, which is why we decided to put together some basic tips on how to safely and effectively clean your cotton picker and cotton picker spindle.
With that in mind, here are five things to consider when cleaning your cotton picker:
Low-pressure water washing: Low-pressure water washing is ideal for washing debris from the front row units of your cotton picker. It is very effective, but it will require a good amount of time, especially if you have a large, multi-row picker. It also makes the ground around the cotton picker very wet, so be careful not to slip and fall when using this cleaning method.
High-pressure water washing: Want to remove the trash and grease in your row units, but don’t have time to wait around for a low-pressure water washing? If so, then high-pressure water washing is your best bet. The higher force of the water pressure is great for pushing off extreme buildup, and is particularly helpful for cleaning out the inside of row-unit cabinets.
High-pressure air cleaning: If you need to remove trash and lint buildup from a cotton picker or cotton picker spindle, then high-pressure air cleaning may be your best bet. Keep in mind that the volume of your high-pressure air cleaner will affect how powerful it is, and you will want to do some research to figure out the safest and most effective level to put your cleaner on.
Precautions: Cleaning a cotton picker can be dangerous work—but as long as you take the proper precautions, you should stay safe. Be sure to wear safety equipment, including gloves, boots, eyewear, long pants, a long-sleeve shirt and heat protection gear. Never point your high-pressure air cleaner at the radiators, hydraulic oil burners or other combustible components.
More tips: There is a lot more we could cover here—remember, if you have questions, ask a professional! That being said, here are a few more general tips to keep in mind about cleaning your cotton picker: raise the handrails when cleaning the tops of bale chambers or picker baskets; hold both handrails and face the ladder when climbing up or down; and remember to use the safety locks on all bale chambers and baskets before cleaning your cotton picker. If you follow these simple tips, you should be in good shape!
Now you know the basics when it comes to cleaning cotton pickers and cotton picker parts! We hope this has been helpful, but if you still have questions, please do not hesitate to contact the helpful team at Certi-Pik, USA.
Have you ever noticed that one of those things everyone remembers from elementary school history class is that Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin? What else do we know about the history of this industry? How has it grown through the years? How has it affected the country as cotton picker parts grew in demand and the industry expanded?
You might be surprised at how much the cotton industry has changed through the years and what an interesting history this industry holds. Read on to discover more.
Cotton in the West
Of course, Eli Whitney wasn’t the first person to contribute to the cotton industry. This fabric was common during the Middle Ages, when it was hand-woven on looms. Ancient Egyptians even grew and spun cotton. It was during the 12th century that cotton weaving was spread to Europe. Around 1350, the spinning wheel was introduced to this part of the world, and by the 15th century several ports had become important, profitable cotton trading hubs.
When Christopher Columbus reached the New World, he discovered natives clad in cotton garments. Yet it wasn’t until the 1790s that the young United States would become a large consumer of cotton goods. At that time, U.S. cotton production was minimal. However, increasing British demand for the products spurred growth in the industry, and innovations in cotton collection and weaving made additional rapid growth possible.
This was when Eli Whitney and his key invention entered the scene. The modern cotton gin increased cotton production and pushed the commodity ahead of tobacco as the main cash crop in the South. By the 1830s, the U.S. had become the world’s top producer of cotton. The plant continued to dominate the South until the 20th century, when the economy began to diversify.
Modern Challenges and Growth
During the 20th century, boll weevils, a type of beetle that feeds on cotton, created tough challenges for the cotton industry. These pests caused billions in damages. They posed such a threat that the Boll Weevil Research Laboratory was established in the 1950s. This organization created lures and traps which successfully fought back against these invaders.
For modern cotton production, biotechnology has become an important factor. Genetically modified cotton can resist chemicals and repel insects. These innovations have helped keep cotton in demand and profitable.
Since the 1980s, demand for cotton has doubled. The U.S. is now the third main producer of the commodity, behind India and China. The cotton industry remains a major employer globally and a popular product around the world.
Discover More
Would you like to learn more about cotton, its history and the modern use of cotton picker parts? Whether you are simply curious or need information to improve your current production, contact the experts at Certi-Pik, USA. We fabricate replacement parts for picking units and offer a broad list of specialty items and sheet metal parts for rebuilding units. Contact us today to receive up to 50 percent savings on quality replacement parts for your John Deere or Case IH Cotton Harvesters.
Cotton has been one of the most important crops in America since the colonial days. Once the Industrial Revolution kicked into full gear, inventors began tinkering with ways to develop machines that would pick cotton for them, rather than having to have tons of workers out in the field picking it by hand.
In the late 1920s, John Daniel Rust began developing the very first practical cotton picker. There are other inventors who had attempted to create mechanical cotton pickers of their own, using barbed spindles that twisted the fibers onto the spindle, pulling the cotton off the boll as a result. However, those designs were often not functional, and were impractical due to how easily the spindles would get clogged up with cotton.
Rust’s design, which had a major impact on the way cotton pickers would be designed in years to come, featured a smooth, moist spindle that would strip the cotton fibers off the boll without resulting in a machinery clog. By 1933, he had his first patent for a cotton picker, and eventually collected 47 total patents (along with his brother Mack) for cotton picking machinery.
Of course, as the Great Depression was underway at this time, it was nearly impossible to get the financing they needed to make their mechanical cotton picker used on a widespread basis. But they continued working nonetheless.
Breakthroughs and adoption
In 1935, John and Mack Rust founded their Rust Cotton Picker Company in Memphis, Tennessee. The next year, they demonstrated their model of the Rust picker at the Delta Experiment Station in Stoneville, Mississippi. This was a significant step forward for the brothers. Even though the picker did have some significant drawbacks and deficiencies, the idea of a mechanical cotton picker was extremely attractive to farmers and investors in the area. The demonstration resulted in significant nationwide attention and press coverage.
Despite the greater coverage, though, the brothers did not have the resources needed to manufacture their cotton picker on a much larger scale. As such, other companies swooped in to attempt to create their own cotton pickers that were not based on the Rust brothers’ patents.
The arrival of World War II put a significant delay on widespread adoption of cotton pickers, even as International Harvester developed its first commercially successful cotton picker in 1944.
Once the war was over, the Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Company started manufacturing cotton pickers that improved on many parts of the Rusts’ design. The success of this machinery led to the development of other pickers, with the technology being gradually improved as more and more American cotton farmers adopted the technology.
Today’s cotton pickers are obviously more advanced and easier to use, but many of the basic elements still hearken back to the initial design created by the Rust brothers in the 1930s.
For more information about the history of cotton pickers, contact Certi-Pik, USA today. We specialize in the fabrication and sale of a wide range of cotton picker parts, and look forward to showing you what we can do for you!
The development of the mechanical cotton picker goes back to the early 1930s, and its proliferation and improvement in the decades that followed made for significantly easier harvesting of cotton. No longer would farmers have to rely on laborers to go out and work the fields all day picking cotton off the bolls—instead, they could invest in a cotton picker that would get the job done in a fraction of the time while also saving a significant amount of money in labor costs in the long run. This increased production and harvesting capability at lower costs had a massive effect on the cotton industry, and as such, on the textile industries as well.
But how does a mechanical cotton picker work? Let’s take a closer look.
Two Main Types of Cotton Picker Machines
In the old days, the earliest cotton pickers only were able to harvest a single row of cotton at a time. Even with this relative inefficiency, however, they still would replace up to 40 hand laborers in the field, saving a whole lot of time and money.
Today’s cotton pickers have obviously evolved quite a bit since those days. These self-propelled machines are capable of removing cotton lint and seed from plants at a rate of up to six rows at a time.
There are two main types of pickers used most commonly on cotton farms today: the “stripper” picker (primarily found in Texas and Arkansas) and the “spindle” picker.
The cotton stripper removes the lint from the plant, as well as a fair amount of plant matter, including bolls that have not yet opened up. The plant matter gets separated from the lint later on in the process, as heavier matter gets separated from the lint before the lint gets moved to its end point in the basket at the back of the picker.
Spindle pickers use rows of barbed spindles, similar to those that had been used to less efficient effect in the early days of mechanical cotton pickers. These spindles rotate very quickly and pluck the seed-cotton off the plant. That seed-cotton then gets taken off the spindles with the use of a counter-rotating doffer, and blown upward into the basket that collects the cotton.
After the basket in either type of picker is full, the picker then dumps that seed-cotton into an area known as a module builder, which compacts the cotton into a brick-like form. These cotton “bricks” can weigh up to 21,000 lbs each and are then stored either in the gin yard or the field until it can be run through a cotton gin. The ginned bales then weigh about 480 lbs.
This is a very basic overview of how a cotton picker works, but it should give you an idea of the efficiency inventors have developed in these machines over the course of the last eight decades. For more information about the type of cotton picker that might be the best solution for your needs, contact the experts at Certi-Pik, USA. We’re your premier source for replacement cotton picker parts for John Deere and Case IH equipment!
