Rotary Cutter Does Direction of Travel Matter?

[leonz]

Edited:


A rotary cutter has only half its cutting edge exposed for mowing at at any time simply because of the design of the mower and its horizontal cut.

A flailmower uses its entire rotor width and knive stations for mowing.

A 4 foot finish cut flail mower with 64 mounting stations will have 16 pairs of side slicers-32 side slicers per row where each slide slicer may have a minimum of 1.5 inches of cutting edge per knive or 3.0 inches per station with sixteen stations and the thirty two side slicers will have a total of 48 inches of cuttting edge PER row providing a total of 192 inches of cutting edge per rotation of the flail mower rotor at speed wherein each of the 132 side slicers removes 1/4 inch of brush height per rotation. MR. Mott knew exactly what he was doing with the Mott Interstater.

With flailmowers versus a rotary cutter or rear mounted rotary mower its always a case of brute force of a rotary cutters pair of blades versus the mechanical advantage of a flailmowers rotor using the X plane(vertical) versus the Y (hoizontal plane) in mowing (cartesian coordinates)in comparing a rotary cutter versus a verticut mower(finish flail mower) or even the smallest flail shredder for crop shredding or topping sugar beets.


Edit:
A rotary cutter does not cut as finely as a flailmower so it leaves much more in cuttings in its wake and it cannot recut the clippings unless they are tinder dry and in effect shatter them.
If we had more front mounted integral implements using the Power Take off from the flywheel as they do in Europe we would have much less trouble mowing and leaving the area as well mowed as one would like to leave it
as the entire area directly in front of the prime mover/implement carrier would be mowed without unmowed brush from wheel tracks.



Food for thought on a Sunday.

 

[LD1]

You win. Feel better?

Not really. Just trying to have a discussion, not trying to "win" anything.

The OP asked about HIS cutter and HIS tractor. ONLY thing being different is the direction of mowing. You brought up different cutters performing differently, which is true, but irrelivant to the OP. Now, if he asked "why does my bushhog brand cutter do better than my woods" or something like that...

A rotary cutter has only hlaf its cutting edge exposed for mowing at at any time simply because of the design of the mower and its horizontal cut.

A flailmower uses its entire rotor width and knive stations for mowing.

A 4 foot finish cut flail mower with 64 mounting stations will have 16 pairs of side slicers-32 side slicers per row where each slide slicer may have a minimum of 1.5 inches of cutting edge per knive or 3.0 inches per station with sixteen stations and the thirty two side slicers will have a total of 48 inches of cuttting edge PER row providing a total of 192 inches of cutting edge per rotation of the flail mower rotor at speed wherein each of the 132 side slicers removes 1/4 inch of brush height per rotation. MR. Mott knew exactly what he was doing with the Mott Interstater.

With flailmowers its always a case of brute force versus mechanical advantage using the X plane versus the Y plane of Cartesian coordinates
comparing a rotary cutter versus a verticut mower or even the smallest flail shredder.



Food for thought on a Sunday.


compared to the 24 inches of one blade on a rotary cutter.

So why does a rotary cutter cut 24" grass faster with a better cut than a flail assuming same tractor and same width cutter?

 

[RickB]

Not really. Just trying to have a discussion, not trying to "win" anything.

The OP asked about HIS cutter and HIS tractor. ONLY thing being different is the direction of mowing. You brought up different cutters performing differently, which is true, but irrelivant to the OP. Now, if he asked "why does my bushhog brand cutter do better than my woods" or something like that...

Everything I posted is relevant to why the OP's setup does a better job in one direction than the other, with the exception of a short detour to leonz' flail fantasy world.

It's not all about throwing cut material into the uncut area although that can be an issue. You might want to occaisionally recognize the possibility that an opinion other than your own may have some merit. Good Day.

 

[the6shooter]

Hey guy's. Here is something that has not been discussed, mower not being square with the tractor. I.E. dog legging off to the side.
I learned this over time, and adjust for it. If the tractor and mower is off just slightly, you will also leave rooster tails, because the side of the cutter will lay a small strip of grass or weeds that will spring back up after you pass it.

I always mow with the blade side that is comming forward in the cut, and the rearward movement to the aready cut side.

Now that being said, some cutters are clock wise and others are counter clock wise.

Now you can, also have too much movement left to right and vis-versa,
Set your mower slightly off the ground, and stand to the rear for your cutter, and check to see if you can swing the tail in either direction and if you can move it a foot or more, take out the slack, this will also help with the rooster tails.
Any bit of drag, to the tail wheel will make the cutter dog leg off to one side or the other. and you can really tell when mowing across slight slopping spots of a field. because the tail whell will always want to run to the lower side. Once again, take the side to side slack out.

Hope this made sense.
david

 

[gwdixon]

Just to continue the discussion (but a bit off topic), my Landpride with two cutting blades rotate in opposite directions. One is CCW while the other is CW. Now carry on.

After that, let us discuss batwing mowers with three cutting blades. farmwithjunk where are you?

 

[bcp]

What's a manual?

Joe

Not automatic.



Bruce

 

[TerryR]

This discussion is making me wonder the way I set up my rotary mower. I have a 60" Bush Hog Squealer, which is not as wide as the rear tires on my JD 870. I have them set to maximum width because of the steep hills on our property.

So I set the mower to the left side, so its left side is about flush with the outside the left wheel. That way, after the first pass, only the left side tires are running in the uncut area.

With it set this way, the blades are moving forward on the left side, and don't tend to pick up the downed grass, which is also bent forward. But I do that because the blade is moving backwards on the right side, where it does tend to pick up the grass downed by the previous pass. My theory is that the grass has the time between one pass and the next to upright itself a bit.

I'm now wondering if I might do better if I reversed the setup so that the pickup action is applied to the freshly bent grass.

I sometimes get rooster tails, but generally not for several hours, or even a couple of days. How bad they are seems to depend on how sharp the blades are, and probably more so, on how recently it's rained. It seems worse when the grass is too dry, I suppose because the grass crushes stays down during my second pass, then comes back up later.

Terry

 

[bcp]

Why does my mower cut better in one direction?

Coriolis effect, adjusted for latitude and air density.



Bruce

 

[LD1]

It's not all about throwing cut material into the uncut area although that can be an issue. You might want to occaisionally recognize the possibility that an opinion other than your own may have some merit. Good Day.

What is your opinion then??? Because your earlier post was pretty confusing about picking up the wheel tracks and overlapping???

I guess the way I mow, I have TWO tire tracks either way I go CCW or CW, because I DONT overlap because it is not as efficent. So with NO overlap, and a 6' cutter on a 5' wide tractor, it dont matter the direction as far as the wheeltracks are concerned.

a short detour to leonz' flail fantasy world.

At least we agree on something :thumbsup:

 

[RickB]

What is your opinion then??? Because your earlier post was pretty confusing about picking up the wheel tracks and overlapping???

I guess the way I mow, I have TWO tire tracks either way I go CCW or CW, because I DONT overlap because it is not as efficent. So with NO overlap, and a 6' cutter on a 5' wide tractor, it dont matter the direction as far as the wheeltracks are concerned.



At least we agree on something :thumbsup:

There are always two wheel tracks. One or the other will be picked up immediately, blade rotation direction dependent. The other wheeltrack can be managed by the direction travelled and overlap. Overlap certainly is inefficient, but can increase cut quality dramatically in certain conditions.