AGCO has announced the Ideal Air Blaster aftermarket upgrade kit for cleaning feeder heads on Fendt combines.
Daniel Houbak, an engineer for AGCO Denmark, and his team developed the Ideal air blaster to help keep the combine’s feeder house clean and clear up visibility for the operator without leaving the cab. This reduces the need for the time-consuming — and often dirty — task of manually clearing debris from the combine.
“We came up with a solution for cleaning up your feeder house to get rid of corn leaves and clean off dust,” Houbak says. “What we did is add on an extra air tank to accumulate high pressure very close to your feeder house.”
Operators have two options to deploy air cleaning: The air blaster can be operated manually through the press of a button in the cab. It can also be set to automatically blast air every minute and a half.
Installation is simple, according Houbak, with installation taking no more than a couple of hours. The nozzle pipes are magnetic, allowing operators to freely move the kit around the feeder house to apply the air blast where needed.
Development and availability
Houbak’s team started work on the project in fall 2022 by visiting farmers in Illinois to discuss operational pain points — identifying feeder house cleaning as a common annoyance with no current solution. Two weeks later, he built the first prototype, and it has since been tested on farms in the Midwest and South Africa.
The Ideal Air Blaster will be available for purchase before harvest 2024, although Houbak hopes to have it out within the next few months. Pricing information is not yet ready, but Houbak estimates it will cost around $2,000. The Ideal Blaster will be exclusive to the Fendt Ideal series combines, but may come to other AGCO brands at a later date.
To sign up for more information on the Ideal Air Blaster, visit IDEALairblaster.com.