Seed drill build thread

[FarmerAlex]

Howdy all, building a seed drill for my Pasquali walk behind tractors.

Independent openers with press wheels, 27 speed gearbox for feed rolls

6 run with 272mm Tyne spacing

Electric raise and lower

 

[BHD]

hope it works to your satisfaction,

 

[FarmerAlex]

Here's the press wheel and seed tube mounted onto a Tyne

 

[1950vanisland]

Here's the press wheel and seed tube mounted onto a Tyne View attachment 431072

great keep us posted with the build

 

[FreshRouteFarm]

Interested to see how this turns out. What did you use for the drop tube?

 

[FarmerAlex]

The seed drop tubes are a vinyl spiral bound hose. I think from memory they are primarily used as a suction pipe for small pumps. The hose I'm using is 25mm or 1 inch in imperial units. It's very flexible and at $5 AUD it's quite cost effective.

 

[NibbanaFarm]

Greetings FarmerAlex,
I have a couple gardens I'd like to convert to no till. I have plenty of mulch and manure. The problem is growing cover crops. My understanding is that a seed drill would be able to plant cover crops through the mulch. I've never actually seen one of these things and haven't been able to find any good descriptions on the internet. Do you know any websites that show the details of how these things work? How did you come up with your design?
Thanks.

 

[FarmerAlex]

Greetings FarmerAlex,
I have a couple gardens I'd like to convert to no till. I have plenty of mulch and manure. The problem is growing cover crops. My understanding is that a seed drill would be able to plant cover crops through the mulch. I've never actually seen one of these things and haven't been able to find any good descriptions on the internet. Do you know any websites that show the details of how these things work? How did you come up with your design?
Thanks.

Gday Nibbana, the biggest issue with seeding into mulch is that you will have a great deal of trouble with the machine blocking between the tynes and becoming more like a bulldozer. Now if you wished to sow into a mulch layer there are two ways i would tackle it, 1 if you can breakup the mulch layer into a fine chop ie 2-3 inches long then it may flow through a staggered seeder tyne sowing pattern. 2 If you cannot do this then i would recommend using a berta type flail mulcher and mounting a seedbox onto the back of that which will incorporate the seed into the mulch layer. Now for seed sizes, depending on what you are growing the seed size can vary quite considerably, peas, vetch and cereals have a much larger seed size than say your ryegrasses and clovers. Mine was designed to sow oats and vetch, both having larger seed sizes. It is quite easy to make two seed boxes as with most large agri seeders you have a standard seed box and a small seed box.

The design is based upon three main criteria

1 Accurate seed depth and firming soil once finished - Therefore i used a press wheel on each tyne to regulate the depth of seeding and firm up the seed in place

2 Variable rate capability - The sowing rate at this stage is regulated by a chain drive with derailleur gears however in the future it will be variable rate driven with electric drive and possible paddock mapping

3 Comfortable to ride on - The machine raises and lowers via two electric jacks on each carry wheel, a flick of a switch to raise an lower when turning on headlands and of course a comfortable platform to stand on.

They are the three basic ideas I kept to for this project, however there is still always a lot of room for improvement.

Cheers Alex

 

[farmerboybill]

No-till drills allow you to plant into untilled ground. Basically a no-till drill has a single straight or wavy coulter that cuts through the trash, a pair of straight disks very slightly angled into a Vee to open the row, a gauge wheel to maintain depth, and a firming wheels to close and firm the row. The biggest problem with them is they need weight to accomplish this. I think a person could make a three to five row drill 2 or 3 feet wide, but it's going to have a lot of weight for a two wheel tractor to pull.

 

[FarmerAlex]

No-till drills allow you to plant into untilled ground. Basically a no-till drill has a single straight or wavy coulter that cuts through the trash, a pair of straight disks very slightly angled into a Vee to open the row, a gauge wheel to maintain depth, and a firming wheels to close and firm the row. The biggest problem with them is they need weight to accomplish this. I think a person could make a three to five row drill 2 or 3 feet wide, but it's going to have a lot of weight for a two wheel tractor to pull.

View attachment 432529

Ah just clarify a minimum till drill does not have to have coulters and discs, it can have tunes, tunes with opening coulters, single disc coulters, double disc openers or a triple disc unit.

Discs are good for stony ground as they ride over buried stones better than tynes. Hydraulic breakout is now a popular option as it's very easy to alter breakout pressures. Although everything that keeps hitting stones will damage the machine.