A touch of Claas
Claas made its first combine sale in 1936, thanks to a trailed model with a seven-foot cutter bar, transverse-mounted thresher and bagger, and binder unit, delivering the bound crop out the side of the machine. It was called the Mäh-Dresch-Binder, or MDB for short – translating as the mower-thresher-binder.
It was developed with the option of a blown chaff unit, allowing the chaff to be collected by a trailed tanker, and taken from the field to help weed seed removal, along with the use of the chaff as animal forage.
By 1943, 1,400 MDB models had been sold, but production ceased so that Claas could concentrate on the war effort for the German Government.
The MDB opened the door for Claas to make an all-in-one combine design, albeit with a side-mounted cutter bar and cross-flow threshing unit, and after the war ended Claas had to rebuild its business – with combine harvesters a key part of its product line-up.
In 1946 the company started selling an updated version
