|
SW Sask | I think my conclusion from reading this post is confirmation of something I realized early on when working with disk drills...... every piece of machinery has its own set of strengths and weaknesses, and its own complexities.
But when you introduce nature's materials (grain in a combine, crop through a windrower, or - especially - you make something that touches the dirt) what you discover is that there is no 'silver bullet'. A machine that works well on stony, glaciated thin black soils in the northern Canadian prairies is unlikely to work as well in ancient Texas dryland. And I think that most of us expect that. But I have seen plenty of situations were a drill worked very well in one field, and required LOTS of trial and error with settings on a field across the road! Prior crop, moisture content, residue management, and the soil structure formed by XX or XXX years of prior cropping make every case a bit special.
I think that this post sums it up best - the OP had a positive experience with a JD disk that generally gets mediocre reviews from the NAT community. He looked to NAT for advice, and acted based on that advice and (unfortunately) it looks like the recommendation doesn't work well for him. Regardless of what we think of his situation and/or agronomics, he is doing the comparison of two different machines in similar circumstances.
Related story. I have a brother with a Master's degree in Mechanical Engineering. He used to go on at length sometimes about how mech eng is the most challenging engineering discipline, they deal with materials (eg metals), fluids (air, hydraulics), energy (thermodynamics and heat transfer), etc, etc, etc.
As an Agricultural Engineering, my response was always "That's fine. You deal with your known materials by looking data up in a book. How about you design a machine that can efficiently thresh a 15 bushel per acre canola crop, a 30 bpa wheat crop, an 80 bpa oat or barley crop, and possibly even a 150 bpa corn crop, while the temp swings from freezing (or lower, :-( up to 100+F, with crop moisture ranging from single digits to maybe as much as 20% while the relative humidity swings from single digits to very high, affecting the characteristics of all the MOG..... Oh, and every one of those factors varies through the day, with time and position. And do it while the operator optimizes the operation by changing speed anywhere between 2 mph and 8 mph."
I only had to repeat that a few times before he starting talking at length about the merits of mechanical engineering from some other point of view.....
danr | |
|
John Deere discs
