Krone and Claas Net Wrap Problems: Field Fixes That Actually Work

By the XES Netting team — bale net-wrap manufacturer · Updated August 13, 2026 · ~15 min read

Krone and Claas balers are common enough in North America to be worth owning and rare enough that the nearest person who really knows the net system may be several counties away. That is the frustration behind most of these threads: one Fortima owner reported that his dealer would not help him, and another opened his thread by asking whether anyone knew a good service department at all, because there were not many round bale folks near him.

This guide collects what actually fixed things, in the words of the people who fixed them — including a Krone specialist who posts as krone.1 and has walked several owners through the same diagnostic sequence. It is for owners of Krone Fortima, Comprima, Vario Pack and KR-series balers, and Claas Rollant and Variant machines. If you run a different colour, we have the same guide for John Deere, New Holland, Vermeer, Case IH, and Massey Ferguson and Hesston.

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Krone: net wrapping around the rubber roller

This is the number-one Krone net complaint, and it usually arrives as a cascade — the net winds onto the roller, you clean it off, it refuses to start again, then it winds on again:

"the net is wrapping on the rubber roller, after you clean it back off it doesn't want to start wrapping again and wraps around the roller again and several times yesterday it got cought in the cutting roller and it would also start wrapping a bale when it was only a foot or two big"

— D_skro, Fortima 1800 MC · HayTalk thread 99924

The instinct is to blame the rubber roller and order a new one. The better move is to eliminate everything else first, because a damaged roller is rarely the actual cause. This is the full sequence a Krone specialist gave, and it is worth working top to bottom before you spend a dollar:

"The brake needs to be free of rust and the brake pad deglazed and in good condition. It should be tight enough that with the brake engaged, you can barely turn the drum. (think a tractor that the power steering has gone out) Make sure the brake is releasing when the wrapping process starts. The net channel need to be clean all the way across. BEWARE OF KNIFE. In effect, the net is being pushed to the bale when it starts. Any resistance will prevent it from going back to the bale. Make sure the fishplate flap inside the chamber is going all the way down. … Make sure your knife isn't broken or damaged and going back to the home position."

— krone.1 · HayTalk thread 99924

Three things in there are easy to miss and worth calling out:

1. The brake tension target is unusually specific. With the brake engaged you should barely be able to turn the drum. Most owners run Krone net brakes far too loose because "barely turns" feels wrong.
2. The brake also has to release. A brake that stays clamped when wrapping starts causes exactly the same symptom as one that never grips.
3. Krone pushes the net to the bale. It is not pulled through by the bale like some designs. That means any friction in the net channel — matted dust, chaff, a bent flap — stops the net dead, and it backs up onto the roller. This is why the problem gets worse in high-moisture hay.

And here is the punchline. The owner above cleaned the drum and hit it with degreaser, which did nothing at all. What fixed it was mechanical abrasion on the glazed pad:

"I cleaned up the drum on the net wrap and sprayed degreaser on it and it did nothing then I hit the break pad with a wire brush and and it made a huge difference, could hardly turn it. I went and baled 80 bales with no problem."

— D_skro · HayTalk thread 99924

A glazed brake pad looks perfectly fine. Solvent will not restore it. Take a wire brush to the friction surface, clean the rust off the drum, and re-check that "barely turns" feel.

Cleaning the net channel

There is no clever trick here — it is an awkward job and worth doing properly once. Owners report finding "matted fine dust" up on the ledge above the knife. Blowing the channel out periodically keeps it clear in dry hay. The plate with the Allen screws inside the chamber is the scraper bar for the spiral roller, not an access panel; if you do remove it, it is set with thread locker and needs heat, and on reassembly it has to go back as close to the spiral roller as possible. Lock the machine out before reaching anywhere near the knife.

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Krone: net not reaching the bale edges

Krone uses an adjustable stretcher bar — a tube with turned-out ends and black plastic rotating rollers — to spread net toward the bale edges. Two separate things go wrong with it.

Aggressiveness is adjustable, and most owners never touch it

"Those curved ends are designed to stretch the ends of the net out to just over the edge of the bale. It's a 48" roll that will slip over the edge of the bale slightly. You can adjust the aggressiveness of this by rotating the entire tube. Loosen the bolt, one on the other end as well … Rotate backwards for more aggressive, forward for less aggressive."

— Bonfire, Fortima · HayTalk thread 101099

Set aggressively, the effect is dramatic — as the same owner put it in another thread, in the aggressive position it "will make a 48" wrap look like cover edge." If you like net over the edge, rotate backwards. If you are tired of edge-covering net snagging when you unroll bales, rotate forward and consider a narrower roll. That style decision is covered in CoverEdge alternatives.

The threading-position trap

This one costs people a whole afternoon. When you load a fresh roll you pull the stretcher bar up until it locks — and if you never release it, the bar stays high and the net catches in the gap between the tube and the plastic end rollers:

"When you load a new roll, you start by reaching in and pulling that stretcher bar up until it locks. That's the position it looks like it's in now. After you have net threaded over the rubber roller and the tail sticking in the bale chamber, you release that spreader bar so it falls back down into position. On the right side of the machine there's a flat bar with a notch. Pull that flat bar forward to release the spreader bar from the notch."

— Bonfire · HayTalk thread 101099

In baling position the stretcher bar should point down. If yours is sitting high, that is your problem, not the net.

There is also a width dimension. The Vario Pack owner in that thread was running the manual's recommended 1,250 mm (about 49 in) net and getting it caught in the end-roller gap; his conclusion after a season was that a narrower roll that just covers the bale side would suit his silage operation better. Wide net plus an aggressive stretcher bar is a lot of net travelling near moving parts. If edge coverage is your goal, see net wrap not covering to the edge; if you are considering a width change, read net wrap roll spacers and different-width rolls first, because it is not always a straight swap.

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Krone: won't stop wrapping, or won't cut

A Fortima V 1800 MC that wrapped fine last season and will not stop wrapping this season is a classic. The first thing to check costs nothing:

"It sounds like you have your monitor set on 'twine'"

— krone.1 · HayTalk thread 102138

And a genuinely important companion tip, because a setting that looks changed on screen may never have been committed:

"When you make a change on the monitor, make sure to hit the disc icon on the screen to save the selection."

— krone.1 · HayTalk thread 102138

If the monitor is genuinely on net wrap and you are seeing fault codes such as 7N and 9, the recommended order is sensors before actuators — test the star wheel sensor first, and only move to the actuator if the sensor checks out.

What linear actuator "M" is supposed to do

Knowing the correct cycle is what lets you spot a wrong one. On the Fortima:

"'M' is the linear actuator. when baling it is in home position. When time to wrap/tie, it tensions the belt until twine/net catches. then back to home. when time to cut it raises and drops knife. then it raises all the way up to reset knife and back to home position for next cycle"

— krone.1 · HayTalk thread 102138

In that case every sensor and actuator tested fine electrically. The fault was purely mechanical — the actuator was being physically blocked:

"In trying to move M actuator we realized it was hitting and being stopped cold by this small roller wheel. The roller wheel bracket seemed froze up. We removed, cleaned and even buffed washers and added a very small amount of grease. Seems to have stopped problem."

— BHParks · HayTalk thread 102138

Another member replied that he had seen the same seized roller-wheel bracket several times. It is a strong candidate any time the electrics test clean but the cycle still misbehaves — and a very likely one after a machine has sat in a shed all winter. Note too that the small thin cable on the right side of the machine is not decorative: it releases the twine brake at the start of the cycle.

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Krone KR130 / KR160 specifics

Older KR-series machines have their own failure mode that does not exist on later balers — small metal tabs with short chain sections hanging between the metal and rubber rollers:

"On my old kr 160 it has several metal tabs with short pieces of chain attached to them that hangs down between the metal roller and the rubber roller. If they are missing it will let the net wrap around the roller. … If the metal tabs jump out of the grooves in the metal roller it can keep the net from going out to the edges of the bale. The only time I had problems with the tabs getting out of the grooves was when starting a new roll of net."

— Blue Duck · HayTalk thread 28034

So on a KR: missing tabs cause roller wrapping, and tabs out of their grooves cause poor edge coverage — and the moment to check is right after you load a new roll. The same owner flagged a buying constraint that is easy to trip over:

"On my kr 160 you have make sure the bigger rolls of net wrap will fit. Most of them have to big of diameter to fit in the baler."

— Blue Duck · HayTalk thread 28034

Measure your net box before ordering long rolls for an older KR. Finally, one Krone behaviour that surprises operators coming from other colours:

"Krone uses a mechanical system, speed doesn't affect # of wraps."

— atgreene · HayTalk thread 28034

Because the Krone net drive is mechanical, changing PTO or engine speed will not change how much net goes on the bale. If you want more wraps, change the setting — throttling up is a John Deere habit that does nothing here.

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Claas: net slipping on the rubber roller

The classic Claas Rollant complaint is net that will not feed because it slips on the rubber roller. On a Rollant 340 running 14,700 ft Rollatex, the first two culprits were surface rust and brake spring tension on a full roll:

"We cleaned up the trough and bars because they had some rust on them. Left the net roll brake off and tried again it finally started feeding … I tried to reapply the net roll brake would not work again took it off worked again."

— Ihclaasman34 · HayTalk thread 101057

The operator manual actually anticipates this — it gives a spring setting but tells you to back the springs off if the net is slipping. That is the key insight: a brand-new, full, heavy roll needs less brake than a half-used one, because its own mass and diameter already resist the pull. Owners commonly run the springs backed off for the first stretch of a new roll and then bring them back up.

A Rollant 66 owner gave the four-point cleanliness check that goes with it:

"Is the rubber roll clean? Is the roller the rubber roll works against clean? Is the drive to the rubber roll gripping and not slipping? Is the trough the roll sits in clean?"

— bool · HayTalk thread 101057

One more detail from that thread worth repeating: two neighbours with the same baler discovered one of them had the net threaded in wrong. Before you chase the brake, confirm the threading path against the manual — see how to load net wrap in a baler.

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Claas: won't stop feeding net

This one has a simple mechanical root cause that catches a lot of operators, especially anyone new to the machine. In a 2024 AgTalk thread, a Western New York producer described a Rollant 520RC that went wrong after a farm hand failed to open the bale dump all the way — which is exactly what resets the cutter bar. First the net would not feed correctly. After the cutter bar was reset by hand the baler wrapped fine, but then the roller that feeds net into the machine would not stop spinning, and the electric clutch was clicking irregularly. The baler was new in 2022 with roughly 750 bales through it, so age was not the story.

A Rollant 350RC owner replying in the same thread confirmed the pattern from his own machine: the only time he sees that fault is when the gate is not fully open and the knife therefore never resets — on his baler that linkage is mechanical, and the clutch is what starts the feed roller. His two follow-up questions were the right ones to ask next: is the brake roller clean, and is there any wrap still on it?

The tailgate has to open fully, every bale. Half-opening it to save a couple of seconds leaves the cutter bar unreset, and the next cycle misbehaves. Tell anyone else who runs the machine.

Continuous wrapping on a Rollant 160: check the ground

A different flavour of the same symptom — belts turning constantly, and a switch behaving backwards on the tractor but correctly at the dealer's bench — got diagnosed in one line:

"That switch seems to be doing the opposite of what it is supposed to do on your tractor, but the right thing at the dealer. I suggest checking your earth. A 160 is basically a 66 with a different control box."

— bool · HayTalk thread 100258

When a circuit works on one power source and inverts on another, suspect the earth/ground before the control box. That "160 is basically a 66" note is also useful for parts and manuals — a Claas manual covering the Rollant 66 covers the 160 as well.

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Claas Rollatex knife-trip motor (Rollant 44 / 62)

Older Claas balers with the Rollatex system use a small DC electric motor to trip the net knife, driven by a control box that counts wraps from a reed switch. Two things fail, and both are repairable.

The motor has a parking switch so the crank arm stops in the same place every cycle. When the motor keeps turning or stops in the wrong spot, the switch is the first suspect — and the fix is often not a new motor:

"The parking switch was a fairly easy fix. The button that extends into the gearbox had some dried out gear lubricant that was making it stick a little and on the motor side, the contacts needed to be spread apart a little more."

— Josh in WNY, Claas 62 · HayTalk thread 67338

That matters because the dealer replacement is not cheap — this owner was quoted $970 for the motor. A local electric motor shop can replace commutators and brushes or rewind the motor for a fraction of that, and there is a specialist in Canada, Farmtronics, that repairs control boxes of this vintage. Two practical notes if you open the motor: the magnets in the cover will try to pull the rotor out of position, and removing the setscrew in the motor cap so you can hold the rotor with a screwdriver makes reassembly straightforward.

It is also worth knowing that the Rollatex design changed. As a Rollant 66 owner noted, "the Rollatex system on later Claas balers is simpler" — his machine uses "a belt drive from one of the rollers and an electric clutch." So advice written for a Rollant 44 or 62 does not necessarily apply to a 66, 160 or later machine — and vice versa.

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Symptom-to-fix table

Symptom	Machine	First thing to check
Net wraps around the rubber roller	Krone Fortima / Comprima	Deglaze the brake pad with a wire brush; brake should barely turn by hand
Net starts, then stops and backs up	Krone	Net channel blocked — the net is pushed, so any friction stops it
Net won't reach bale edges	Krone Fortima / Vario Pack	Stretcher bar left locked up in threading position; should point down
Net won't reach bale edges	Krone KR130 / KR160	Tabs jumped out of the grooves in the metal roller
Won't stop wrapping / won't cut	Krone Fortima	Monitor set to twine; save with the disc icon. Then star wheel sensor
Electrics test fine, cycle still wrong	Krone Fortima	Seized roller-wheel bracket physically blocking actuator M
Net slips on the rubber roller	Claas Rollant 340	Rust in the trough and bars; back the brake springs off on a full roll
Net feed roller won't stop spinning	Claas Rollant 350RC / 520RC	Tailgate was not opened fully, so the cutter bar never reset
Continuous wrap, switch acts inverted	Claas Rollant 160	Bad earth/ground before suspecting the control box
Knife won't trip	Claas Rollant 44 / 62	Rollatex motor parking switch — dried gear lube and tight contacts

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Before you blame the net

Almost every fix above is a machine fix, and that is the honest picture: most Krone and Claas net faults are brake, path, position or ground problems. But net quality does interact with them. Net that is inconsistent across its width feeds unevenly into a channel that is already tight, and net that shreds under a dull knife leaves tails that catch and start the next jam. If you have deglazed the brake, cleaned the channel, and set the stretcher bar and it still misbehaves on one brand of net and not another, that is a real signal — several owners in these threads switched brands and the roller-wrapping stopped.

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Where XES fits

We build net wrap to consistent width and strength across the full roll, which is what a push-fed system like Krone's and a friction-driven system like Claas's both depend on. We list width, length, roll outside diameter and core inside diameter on every spec sheet, so you can confirm a roll physically fits an older KR or Rollant net box before it ships. See our net wrap for Krone balers and net wrap for Claas balers pages, check a specific model with the baler size checker, or browse everything on the net wrap product page.

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The bottom line

On a Krone, work the brake first: deglaze the pad, clean the rust off the drum, and set it so the drum barely turns — then confirm it releases when wrapping starts. Clean the net channel, drop the fishplate flat, and make sure the stretcher bar is down in baling position and not still locked up from threading. On a Claas, clean the trough, back the brake springs off on a full roll, and open the tailgate all the way every single bale so the cutter bar resets. If the electrics test fine but the cycle is still wrong, look for something mechanical in the way — a seized bracket or a sticky parking switch — before you buy a control box.

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Frequently asked questions

Why does net wrap around the rubber roller on my Krone baler?

Usually a glazed or rusty net brake, or a blocked net channel. Krone pushes net to the bale rather than pulling it, so any resistance stops the net and it backs up onto the roller. Deglaze the brake pad with a wire brush, clean the drum, and set tension so the drum barely turns by hand.

How tight should the net brake be on a Krone baler?

Tight enough that with the brake engaged you can barely turn the drum by hand — one Krone specialist compares it to steering a tractor whose power steering has failed. Just as important, confirm the brake actually releases when the wrapping cycle starts, since a brake that stays clamped causes the same symptoms.

My Krone Fortima won't stop wrapping. What do I check first?

Check that the monitor is set to net wrap rather than twine, and press the disc icon to save it, or the change will not stick. If the setting is correct, run the sensor test and check the star wheel sensor before the actuator. Also look for anything mechanically blocking the linear actuator.

Why won't net feed on my Claas Rollant?

Most often the net is slipping on the rubber roller because the trough and bars have surface rust, or because the brake springs are set too tight for a full, heavy roll. The manual specifies backing the springs off if net is slipping. Also confirm the net is threaded the correct way.

Why does my Claas baler keep feeding net without stopping?

Usually the tailgate was not opened fully on the previous bale, so the cutter bar never reset. Open the gate all the way every cycle. On a Rollant 160 showing constant wrapping with a switch that behaves backwards on the tractor but correctly at the dealer, check the earth/ground first.

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This guide is maintained by the XES Netting team — a bale net-wrap manufacturer. Every farmer quote in this post is verbatim with a thread link, so you can go read the originals. Procedures vary by model and year: always follow your operator manual, and shut the tractor down and lock the machine out before working near the net knife, the chamber, or any actuator.

Featured photo: Baler Krone Fortima V 1500 MC in Wilhersdorf, St. Margarethen an der Sierning, Austria by GT1976, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

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