anybody built a rotative pasture mower?

[tatra805]

Here we go, a little bit premature but i would like to hear your opinions.

As flail mowers are expensive or too big for my iseki the idea came to build something myself.

The only cutting i have to do is pasture maintenance. This involves cutting the areas the horses are not eating. Mostly also these areas are their dumping place.

I do have a self driven flail mower but experience that the thing floats on the dung or digs in and does not cut.

The main aim is to make small particles and spread them.


Attached a shematic drawing of the principle.

Bearings, balancing of the discs etc is quite clear. The discs i intend to use are .... car wheel rims mounted on automotive hubs driven by a belt system which is powered by the PTO.

Rotation speed etc still needs to be calculated.

The ventilator blades just throw the cut stuff a little further. Might be dangerous but I want the blades there as it opens the possibility to feed fertilizer through the top plate into the air stream... even when not cutting.

Mounting 2 or 3 wheels on top of each other would make an easy change to have a mower for hay.

Mounting brushes on a rim would make a rotation brush for cleaning.

Mounting spring pins would make it a hay spreader or an aerator.

Etc must exist more possibilities but thats as far as it goes to cover my needs.


I do know this is a dangerous venture but a bought mower is also when in the wrong hands.


let me know your thoughts, I am going without experiences but enjoy building more than making payments.

 

[Taylortractornut]

Are you familiar with a disc mower for hay? They use a pair of small swinging blades on disc shaped roters about 12 inches in diameter. There is several on one units that hangs to the side like a sickle mower. About 13 years ago When I was 16 I was repairning an old loader at a farmers yard. I saw a set of home built mowers that they had made to mow thick johsons grass. These mowers are expensive so they made some. . It was made from car rims and and axles like you design. They mounted 4 rims one a 2x3 tube and had belts running from one rim to another with a pto driven pulley. They then welded brackets to hold the swinging knives to the rims. It worked pretty good and much faster than the sickle mower, but shattered the grass a bit much for baling. Then the next one was more of a hay mower for a smaller tractor they still use it some for making Kudzu hay. It was basically a 3 foot round disc that had a reinforcing band around it and had 4 of the swinging knives around it. it was ofset and driven by a v belt from the pto to. They modeled it after an Austrailian model they had seen. I think one similar is made in Japan under the Star name. Heres Another mfg. link. Agriquip: Small Tractor Hay Tools Package Deal

 

[tatra805]

Taylortractornut,

exactly the disc mower is the inspiration, i misnamed it a flail mower in my post. The wheels are the rims you are describing.

good to hear i'm not the first with this idea.

 

[Taylortractornut]

If you'd like a rotary mower that is simple to build also you might build one like an old Woods rotary mower with a Tire drive instead of a gear box. They had a large round plate that had a shaft in the middle that looked like a trailer axle spindle and it had a hub like mount that mounted on the mower deck. The plate had 2 to 4 swinging blades like a rotary mower. The deck had a rectangular hole in the top that a Center rib Implement wheel sat an a long shaft on pillow bearings that the pto drove it. It ran a bit faster than other mowers and was alot better in heavier stuff because the drive wheel would slip if the blades jammed. Also varied tire pressure also affected this. Theres still alot of them around here. The larger ones here used a 3/4 plate but on a smaller tractor I think it was 1/2 or 3/8ths.