Quote:
Originally Posted by Vermin_King
Very nice, but I hope your corn is already in and up
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Well, it's not really late YET, depending where in the country you're at...
If my wife hadn't broke her arm at the elbow in two places and my Mom hadn't been in the hospital the last 9 days, I'd be in northern Indiana right now helping my brother in law plant corn and soybeans...
Later! OL J R
PS. Nice work on the old Cyclo planter... IH's first air planter... They were "high technology" back in the day, but now you can't give them away... the center-fill air-pressurized seed hopper was kind of ahead of its time, but the central seed-metering drum that measured out the seed quantity and spacing and then blew the seed down long plastic hoses to the row openers really killed the spacing, especially in spacing-sensitive crops like corn. For beans, milo (grain sorghum), and cotton, where higher seeding rates (plant populations) are common and spacing errors between seeds aren't so critical, they worked okay.
As guys went bigger than 8 rows, like the step up to 12 rows, they had to put TWO hoppers on them with six row drums... then guys went to 16 rows and that required two 8 row drums and seed hoppers. Now some planters get up over 40 rows... For awhile there, guys would pick up those old Cyclo air planters and build bigger planters out of them, particularly for soybeans where the spacing isn't much of an issue. Now you can't give them away, and most have long since gone to the scrap yard...
Now planters are going back to the central hopper idea, so they can carry large amounts of bulk seed in a central tank, requiring less (and easier) refills (since there's only one point to refill the planter with seed, versus filling individual seed hoppers over each row unit). BUT, they still meter the seed and space it out properly by placing the seed disk or meter at each individual row directly above the seed tube down into the seed trench created by the row openers... MUCH more accurate spacing and metering that way. They still blow the seed out to "mini-hoppers" attached to each row metering unit, but it's blown out there by a pressurized air system attached to the bottom of the central hopper, fed by a rather simple agitator/meter similar to a grain drill that dispenses seed into the air flow in the hose... metering more seed than required, of course... the mini-hopper receives seed until it's full, at which point it cuts off the airflow and stops the hopper from overfilling... as it empties, more seed is delivered from the hose...
Later! OL J R