I'm Brian Messick with Messick Farm Equipment. Today, we're going to talk about small square balers. Specifically, we're going to try to highlight some of the differences in the New Holland small square balers through the years. We're going to look at a New Holland 326 baler that was built back in the early '80s. It was the highest capacity baler at the time, and the largest small square baler New Holland made. 

When that baler phased out, we went to a 575. The 575 Baler was built for over 25 years. That was the Cadillac of small square balers. Industry-standard number one baler in the industry. We're going to look at that baler and see some of the changes they made from a 326 to a 575. Then we're going to go from a 575 to a BC5070, which is the industry's leading small square baler. Just look at some of the changes that were made from a 575 to a BC5070. 

Let's start here with this New Holland 326 Baler. Again, it's an older baler built back in the '80s. New Holland's patented this power pivot, which is this area right here. What it does is it lets us run a small PTO shaft to our tractor. Our tongue pivots on a carrier bearing here. What that lets us do is turn tight with our baler, not bind our driveline, and it lets the driveline follow the tongue of the tractor. 

As we come back, you have your slip clutch for your flywheel and then your shear bolt for your flywheel. You'll see commonalities in that as we go through. This was a category five driveline. For the time, that was plenty heavy for the tractors we were working with. You could've had a manual swing tongue or a hydraulic swing tongue on this. This one's equipped with a manual swing tongue. As we go over, we're going to look at the 575 and see what that has. 

As you can see, on a 575, the system pretty much so remains the same. We have a small stub shaft for our PTO coming back to our Power Pivot, which again is going to pivot with the baler when we open it up. Driveline is going to come back to a larger slip clutch now. We're gearing up for bigger tractors, heavier tractors to be running this baler. Some things you'll see, this baler has plastic PTO shields, that one had metal. Going to a little more cost-effective shielding. This shielding doesn't dent or bend like the metal did. But you can see we've gone from a 326 to a 575. We've kept the same design here. Just simplified it as we come back through our power transfer. 

The tongue did get heavier. It's a little bigger, a little bigger box steel. Again, to accommodate the bigger tractors. Also, to accommodate the added weight of a 575 baler. Here we're at a BC5070. This is current model small square baler. This is the largest capacity small square baler New Holland built. You can see at the front of the baler, a lot hasn't changed from the 326 design. We still have a power pivot. We're still running back to our flywheel. Underneath the shielding now, we have a very heavy slip clutch. We've upgraded our driveline to a category six driveline. We've updated our shields. On it plastic shielding. We closed in our power pivot up here. 

We have a PTO holder that holds your PTO shaft. We also have hydraulic hose holders on the side here, to keep our hoses up and out of the dirt. We have a heavier tongue. Again, to accommodate heavier tractors since we've gone to a heavier driveline. But in essence, the same flow of power transfers remain the same over the course of the last 40 years in small square balers. On a 326, again, largest baler in its class in its time. We had a 68-inch wide pickup. We have SuperSweep pickup teeth. They have the curved tooth on it. We still had our wind guard that presses down to keep our hay. 

As the hay comes back into the baler, this baler used the flow action flow for the crop. It was a series of teeth mounted on a bar that moved the hay down and across and down and across and into the baler. You'll see there is a dramatic change when we go to the 575 and the 5070, how we get that hay off the pickup into the bale chamber itself. As you make a right here to the 575, the first thing you'll notice is we have a much larger pickup, we're 75 inches wide. We have a much wider pickup to accommodate those larger windrows we're going to make now. We still have our SuperSweep pickup teeth. 

They have the curved tooth to bring our hay up into the bale chamber. As the hay comes up off the pickup, this is where it's changed dramatically from a 326. We have a rotary feeding system. We're running on a set of three rotors that are timed running across the bale chamber to move the crop from one section to the next section to the next section. Then we have what we're going to call a stuffer fork, which was this piece up there. That's your stuffer fork. As the hay moves across, the plungers back, the fork will insert and push that wad of hay into the bale chamber. What that lets you do is getting more consistent flake in your bale to give you a much more consistent bale shape and size. 

We'll move down here and we'll look at the BC5070 and see what they did there. We're over here on a BC5070, and you'll notice not that much has changed on that from a 575. We still have the same 75-inch wide pickup, same SuperSweep pickup teeth. We're still running the rotary flow action system to feed over to our bale chamber, and we're still running a stuffer fork. The things that did change. They put a larger pickup tire on here, floatation than on a 575 to just help upgrade your pickup. They did change the pickup drive. How that drives on a 5070, and we'll highlight that when we come around to the side over here. 

On a BC 5070, when talking about pickups, they changed the pickup drive belt. You'll see this as the drive belt for the pickup. It's located on the outside of the knotter stack drive. That's crucial, because when trying to fix this belt on a 575 or a 326, you had to disassemble the knotter to get the belt replaced. On the 5070, they stuck it on the outside, makes for easy access if you ever tear your pickup drive belt. In the previous balers, you can see the pickup drive belt is on the inside of the knotter drive gear. Making it very difficult to replace. 

Back at the tying area of the baler, we have a self-tying automatic knotter. Patented and built by New Holland. On this particular baler, this has hydraulic tension on it. It is controlled right here by our hydraulic density system. This was something new for this baler. We're used to spring tension-type density. We've now gone to a hydraulic system. It was adjusted by this little dial here, giving you a pressure reading on this gauge. Hydraulic oil reservoir was here, driven by this chain to create pressure for your cylinder back on your density. 

When we get up to the 575, you'll see that that system has dramatically changed. If you look at the knotter, you'll see chain drives versus belt-driven. The bale length adjustment, you'll see is a star metering wheel. As we move up through, you'll see that has not really changed over the years. Let's go up to the 575 and see how they do their tension and density. We were talking about hydraulic density. When we moved to the 575, they move the system to the front of the baler. Your pressure gauge is upfront and readable from the tractor. The dial to change the system is just over to the side here. 

Inside here, is your reservoir and your controls for the density that is then applied back at the back of the baler. Back here on the back of the baler, you'll notice--Again, the hydraulic system has changed for our density. All that has been moved to the front of the baler, and all we have is our lines and our cylinder on the back to control our density. You'll notice all the chains and everything are gone for driving. We have gears and a belt to drive our knotter stack. All that has been changed. 

You'll notice the knotters are bigger. Everything got beefier and heavier. You notice the star wheel has gotten bigger. We've been just growing the capacity of this baler as it gets newer and newer in age to increase the capacity that the farmers are demanding from that. Here on our BC5070, it's going to look very similar to our 575. Same type of knotter drive. Again, we moved the pickup drive belt. The star wheel for our metering system is actually moved back. We moved that back away from the plunger to get a more consistent bale and not have the metering wheel tick falsely to change our bale size. This is moved back to get a more uniform bale. Our density system has remained about the same. 

We're doing all of the density controls up front of the Baylor and we're applying the pressure back here on the back of the baler. Why we're here, the new Holland BC5070 is equipped- if you're getting it equipped with a thrower, it's a model 72 bale thrower. These are hydraulically driven. They're driven off the front, off of the flywheel to a hydraulic motor that's gonna run our bale thrower. Speed control is done electronically. Gives you a gauge on the front to adjust that. That's done with a toggle switch that's inside the tractor. You'll see that the bale thrower as we work our way back down to the 575 to 326, it has changed, but not much over the years. 

A BC5070. We're up at the front of the baler, but this is where the drive occurs. We're driving off the flywheel with this belt to power our thrower. Our hydraulic reservoirs inside the baler, back under here. It's not out in the way, but our drive is up here. Like the BC5070, we are running a 72 thrower and again, hydraulically driven. Our speed control is up here in the front. That is the same as on a 070. Let's look at the 326. On a 326 baler, the earlier ones had a mechanical drive thrower. Meaning we had a long shaft running the back that was driven off of the baler. You couldn't really regulate your speed very well. What we called a mechanical drive. Some of the later ones had the start of the hydraulic drive thrower. 

This is what you see here. Again, we're driving off the flywheel. Our reservoir sits up front here versus on all of our newer balers. It's in under- it's inside the baler. Not having all this hanging out the side. The initial thrower was a 70 thrower, and then they did upgrade to a 72 thrower that could be installed on this baler. When we talk about small square balers, everyone talks about capacity. How much can I shove in the Baylor without breaking the flywheel, shear bolt? How much- how big can my windrows be? A lot of that is dictated, capacity wise is one, how wide a pickup do I have? Two, how fast is my plunger going? We talk plunger strokes per minute. How many times the plunger going in and out, in and out. 

On a baler like this, a 326, it's 79 plunger strokes per minute. That's going to be rated when you're running the tractor at 540 PTO. That's going to dictate how much hay can I get across here into the bale chamber at a time. When we move up to a 575 and a BC5070, we went to a wider pickup. We said 75 inches, and we go up to 93 plunger strokes per minute. The plunger is now going in and out more times than it was on this baler. Which left us then add to capacity of the Baylor. Lets us drive faster, lets us put bigger windrows in. Then also the changing of the feeding mechanism, not running on a track versus running on rollers, going in. We were able to increase how we can get the crop into the bale chamber. 

As we looked at some of the differences over the years between a 326 a 575 and a 5070 baler, you saw they have made progressions that have made the balers work better, give us larger capacity, longer lifespan. Just overall better performance in our balers through the years. Not that we're saying that an old baler isn't a good baler. Some of the very well taken care of balers will perform many more good years they have. But we just wanted to let you know some of the highlights they've changed throughout the years. If you have any interest in any small square balers or any equipment you may see, please visit us on the web at messicks.com or give us a call at 1-800-222-3373