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Farmington, Mo | Hey Donald,
The main issue we had with the machine when we first got it was getting the seed meter calibration right. If the seed characteristics change much when switching varieties, or crops…the seeding rate can be off in a dramatic fashion.
There is a process for using a catch bag under a meter section where you go through several steps on the display, then walk to the back of the machine, hold a switch for 100 revolutions to dispense seed into the bag, weigh the bag and then enter that weight into the cab display so the computer knows how much seed is coming out per revolution.
Since there is no direct connection to the ground, this is the only way for it to know how fast to make the meters spin according to ground speed so the rate is accurate.
We didn’t realize how much the rate can differ in just switching from treated to non treated or simply one variety to another. Had some oops fields…but it taught us how important the calibration step is!
There is also an active calibration procedure where the drill uses the amount of seed dropped(using onboard scale) over a known area to calculate the calibration…the only problem with this is it takes 8-12 acres to get a large enough sample size to be accurate. We typically do the manual calibration, then run an active calibration to fine tune it. It’s surprisingly accurate when done properly.
Feel free to email me if you have more questions. | |
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Grain Drill: JD 1590 vs 1990CCS or N530C
