Well, this is what the company says: “Featuring a working width of up to 9.5m, Active Float ground-pressure control, non-stop collision protection, roller conditioner and flexible, high-performance auto swather swath grouping with optimised crop flow, the mower is the professional machine of choice for powerful yet gentle forage and biomass harvesting.”
Cutting lucerne, winter forage and whole-crop silage is a special challenge for mowers. While lucerne is a fragile crop that calls for particularly gentle conditioning, like whole-crop silage and winter forage, it also produces high yields so the mower has to handle high volumes of material as well. Efficient crop flow is therefore just as important as robust, sturdy drives and high-performance swath grouping with optimised swath formation.
The innovative crop flow is a particular feature of the Disco 9700 RC Auto Swather. As standard, the roller conditioners are driven by a double drive roller with a specially designed scissor gearbox for maximum throughput and durability - even under sustained heavy use, according to the company. The transmission and drive trains are designed for use with tractors up to 500hp and incorporate new, P-Line triple telescopic driveshafts developed jointly with Walterscheid featuring specially toughened, large-diameter steel profiles and a new K-90 friction clutch. This combination makes the Disco 9700 RC Auto Swather the most powerful belt mower with conditioner currently on the market.
Two counter-rotating polyurethane rollers crush the crop gently yet effectively without loss. The conditioner spans the entire width of the mower bed to ensure continuous linear flow without forage blockages. Optimised crop transfer to the 1,100mm wide, extremely robust Kevlar-reinforced cross conveyor belts ensures uniform filling of the auto swather belt units. This produces an even, loose and perfectly shaped swath which the harvester following behind can easily pick up and process.
When working without swath grouping, with less regrowth or when less wilting is required, one or both of the belt units can be folded up hydraulically to consolidate a working width of 19m to 12m (the “19 to 12” method) for the next pass with a 12.7m wide standard four-rotor swather. When combined with Claas tractors with the new Cemic 1200 with GPS Pilot, fields can easily be divided into plots.