outside looking for more corn cobs | gsi - 5/1/2010 21:29
Tell me about these planters. Were the boxes on them for seed or fert? What made them such good planters? Read a lot of posts on here how these were the best ever built. Thanks.
If you're comparing them to an old plate planter, they're the cat's meow.
If you're comparing them to almost any other planter of the same age, they're still pretty good.
If you're comparing them to a brand new planter, they're not that great.
I went from an old Deere plate planter and A-C plate planter to a Cyclo 400. I never had a planting go so fast. Granted I was only planting 20 odd acres that year. But, it went at least twice as fast as it had on previous years with the plate planters. Dad wasn't happy with the planting results, but that was 100% due to my lack of driving skills at the time.
I had a little trouble getting the markers to cooperate. It took a few R&Rs to get them right, mostly cylinder seals. But even that wasn't that bad, just my own stupid mistakes caused the repeat failures.
The drive was simple. A rubber tire running on the main lift tire drove the shafts and chains that turned the drum. You changed population by changing which sprockets the chain ran on.
The hopper was pressurized by the fan, and the air from the hopper flowed into the drum along with the seed.
The drum consisted of a large, well, drum. But, it was simpled outward, with a hole in the center of each dimple. The seed would be held to the drum by the difference in air pressure between the inside and outside of the drum. As the drum rotated, the seed traveled upwards towards the highest part of the drum, where a press wheel on the outside of the drum ran on the rows of dimples. The press wheel would press just enough on the seed to create an air leak. The resulting loss of pressure differential would then cause the seed to drop into the seed funnel for the seed hose for that particular row. The seed hose ran out the front of the drum housing and over to it's row.
In our case, it was a Cyclo 400. A four row planter. The drum had 6 rows of dimples/holes, but a rubber band around the unused rows reduced the amount of air loss. The unused rows also did not have a press wheel on them.
As I recall, the fan speed was primarily determined by the engine RPM. Ours was a hydraulic drive fan with a 540 rpm pump. I can't remember if there was much (if any) adjustment for the fan speed other than the engine RPM.
I do remember that on the front of the drum was a pressure gauge, and if the pressure was too low, it wouldn't plant. So sealing of the hopper was critical. But thankfully, I didn't have any trouble with that. The pressure gauge on the hopper read 0-25 oz/in^2.
Edited by afx_guy 5/3/2010 16:54
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Was the case cyclo planter the first bulk fill?
