Hay rake for Claas Xerion


My first Technic model: a hay rake for the 42054 Claas Xerion. It connects to the Xerion's power output axle in order to drive some of its functions.

Features:
  • raise & lower the wings with a switch
  • start/stop the rakes' rotation with a switch
  • a pair of levers allows to simultaneously either raise the support legs + engage the coupling to the Xerion, or lower the support legs + release the coupling.
  • the tractor's steering is transmitted to the rear wheels through steering arms (mechanism inspired from mentalspagat's hey rake for 8284)
  • the follower-wheels under the wings have a small, limited turning radius in order to be able to follow in curves.


When built properly, all functions work fine, as shown in the following video (although it's easy to make building mistakes). The only known problem is that when raising the wings, some of the rake arms' tips will touch the ground, making those arms twist up a bit.



I also made a color-swapped version for red Xerion's, but it doesn't look as good I think:

About the parts:
It uses mostly common parts, with a few notable exceptions:
  • the black towball with axle is very rare, appearing only in 8880 and only in a minority of them. It's black in order to match the black ball of the other switch, but you could use a common light-bluish gray one.
  • the light-bluish gray changeover catch is quite rare, appearing only in one set. Again, it's that color to match the other switch. You could use red instead.
  • the 2L flex tubes are not that common (and 16 are used). I couldn't find any other way of joining 2 axles at an angle.
  • the 64 rigid hose 6L are of course a problem to get. Obviously you could use 6L axles, but they're much heavier, which is a problem for both the 2L flex tube connections and the fact that the motor is only M and behind a clutch gear.
  • the 1x1 galactic tile is rare, appearing only in one set. It's used to indicate which side the switch has to be set in order to start the rakes' rotation. It's suitable since it shows 8 concentric arms.
  • the arrow stickers are from 79103. It shows which way to pull the switch in order to raise the wings (towards the arrow that points to the frame) or lower the wings (towards the arrow that points away from the frame). I couldn't find any suitable printed tiles. You could also use cut stickers from 8421, like shown on the picture below.

Note that the inventory may be slightly wrong, since it's auto-generated from my rather complex MLCAD source file.

Instructions are high-quality and I probably spent around 100 hours on them:
Download parts-list (Bricklink-XML)

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