And the beat goes on
When it first broke cover in 1995, Claas’ Lexion 480 stopped everyone in the machinery world in their tracks. Here was something truly different – a twin rotor machine with the front end from a strawwalker combine. It wasn’t entirely unexpected that the German manufacturer would come up with something out of the ordinary.
Business owner Helmut Claas was known for his unconventional thinking when it came to engineering challenges as the company’s Commandor CS machines proved in the early ‘80s. Over their 15-year production run, these quirky machines with their eight laterally mounted separation cylinders in place of straw walkers enjoyed varying degrees of success and never really made themainstream. By the mid-1990s, farming was ready for something different. New Holland had had its twin rotor TRs out running for two decades and Case IH’s Axial Flows weren’t far behind that. But these two pioneers relied solely on the rotors to do the threshing which meant they could be a little bit ‘harsh’ on the straw and were limited in capacity in north
