Introduction
When harvest season arrives, every bushel counts. And while most operators focus on header setup, ground speed, and rotor settings, one of the most impactful upgrades you can make to your combine is often overlooked: the concaves.
Kondex KX7 concaves have earned a strong reputation among serious grain farmers for delivering cleaner separation, reduced grain loss, and better performance across a wide range of crop conditions. Here’s what you need to know.
What Are Concaves — and Why Do They Matter?
Concaves are the curved grates that wrap around the rotor or cylinder inside your combine. As crop material passes through, the concaves work with the rotor to thresh grain from the plant material. The quality of your concaves directly affects:
- Threshing efficiency — how completely grain is separated from the cob, head, or pod
- Grain loss — how much good grain passes over the sieves and out the back of the machine
- Crop damage — cracked kernels reduce grade and dockage at the elevator
- Throughput capacity — better concaves let you push higher ground speeds without sacrificing separation quality
The KX7 System: MaxThresh and MaxRound
The Kondex KX7 system is built around two complementary concave assemblies — each engineered for a specific role in the threshing chamber.
KX7 MaxThresh Concaves
KX7 MaxThresh concaves deliver a better, faster thresh than large-wire or small-wire concaves. The key is an angled-bar design that meets the crop head-on for more aggressive, immediate threshing. To protect against wear while softening contact, Kondex applies a laser cladding additive to the threshing bars — extending performance and life well beyond other high-wear options.
MaxThresh assemblies should be placed in the frontmost positions in your threshing chamber. This achieves earlier threshing and allows for more separation as your crop flows through.
KX7 MaxRound Concaves
KX7 MaxRound concaves also feature an angled-bar design for some threshing, but their primary function is separation. They’ve proven highly effective at preventing plugging, which directly lowers rotor loss. MaxRound bars are heat-treated for a 25% improvement in wear resistance over non-heat-treated concaves.
MaxRound assemblies should always be placed behind MaxThresh concaves to maximize separation performance.
How KX7 Makes You More Productive
The angled-bar design of both KX7 assemblies meets the crop head-on for more immediate threshing — increasing the overall capacity of your combine. This allows you to:
- Raise your concave clearance
- Reduce wear on your rotor
- Gain more flexibility to fine-tune settings
- Achieve more grain-on-grain threshing through increased airflow disruption
Greater Customization
At half the width of most traditional concaves, KX7 doubles your configuration options. Choose from MaxThresh and MaxRound assemblies, each with removable, replaceable, and reversible box inserts. This gives you the unique flexibility to customize your combine’s threshing chamber by crop type or field condition — something traditional concaves simply can’t match.
Precision Manufacturing
Every KX7 concave is robotically manufactured, with welds individually inspected by American Welding Society (AWS)-qualified welders. Kondex’s ISO-certified quality assurance process includes rigorous visual and robotic testing to ensure each component meets or exceeds expectations for fit and performance.
Which Crops Benefit Most?
KX7 concaves are particularly well-suited for:
- Corn — improved separation in high-yield, high-moisture conditions
- Soybeans — cleaner threshing with less pod shatter and cracked beans
- Wheat and small grains — consistent bar spacing improves separation without over-threshing
- Specialty crops — the reduced-aggression design is a strong fit for crops where sample quality is critical
Is It Time to Upgrade?
If your current concaves are showing wear, or if you’ve been accepting grain loss and cracked samples as “just part of harvest,” it may be time to take a closer look at what’s happening inside your combine.
Signs it’s time to replace or upgrade your concaves:
- Visible wear on the bars or wires
- Increasing grain loss at the rear of the machine
- Elevated cracked grain percentages at the elevator
- Inconsistent threshing across the width of the rotor
Shop Kondex KX7 Concaves at Quality Farm Supply
Quality Farm Supply stocks Kondex KX7 concaves for a wide range of combine makes and models. Our team can help you identify the right fit for your machine and crop mix.
👉 Shop Kondex KX7 Concaves — Click Here
Have questions? Contact our parts team — we’re here to help you get the most out of every acre.
