This year the 50,000th Claas Lexion with its jubilee design will be seen at many fairs and exhibitions across Europe. According to Claas, more than 50,000 parts, 4,000m of electrical cable and 215m of hydraulic lines are installed inside each Lexion.

After almost one decade of development, Claas introduced the first Lexion combine harvester in 1995. The 400 series offered farmers the new APS threshing system, with its threshing drum expanded to 600mm. This, combined with the RotoPlus residual grain separation system, resulted in the APS Hybrid system. Since the original Lexion 400 series, the range has been updated three times. The Lexion 480 at 415hp had potential harvesting capacity of 40t of grain per hour.

In 2003, the Lexion 500 series represented further development. It had larger harvesting capacities and refined technical systems, such as adjustable rotor flaps for adapting the separation area and a quick stop for front-mounted attachments. Only two years later, Claas launched the 600 series which had a harvesting capacity of up to 70t of grain per hour. In 2010, the production of the largest Lexion range in the 700 series began. These combines can travel at 40km/h on the road. Claas says the large combines still protect the soil structure by using tracks instead of wheels.

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The Lexion 780 grain tank has a capacity of 13,500 litres and is equipped with the integrated Cemos Automatic driver assistance system.

The software controls specific default values set by the farmer and, after a short period of time, it finds the optimum settings for the threshing systems.

Changing conditions

By taking into consideration the changing harvesting conditions during the course of a day, these optimum settings are checked on a per-second basis and adapted continuously. The Lexion 700, which now features a 4D cleaning system and an automatic crop flow control system, received the machine of the year 2016 award at the world’s largest agricultural technology fair, Agritechnica.