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Coldwater, Michigan | Jay,
This one of those cases where you need to be careful. It used to be the "old" sweet corns worked quite well with seed placed starters, but the newer extra sweet varieties are not as tolerant to the seed placed starters. Sand only makes it worse. The irrigation would be more forgiving if you turned it on immediately after planting.
As to the kits. Original equipment liquid setups are quite expensive. The are some really nice after market kits for reasonable cost. Depending on what you are trying to accomplish with your setup, you may not need to have the fertilizer coulters. That alone would lower the cost considerably.
A 12 row planter set up with tanks and the plumbing and pumps, needs to cost upto $2500. It can be less or more, depending on where you go from there. Price that against a new factory kit that isn't really designed to place on the seed anyway.
Demco, years ago used to have shoes that ran in the side of the furrow and placed the fertilizer 1/4 to 1/2 inch from the seed. That probably would improve the safety compared to having in contact with the sweet corn.
Some seeds should not have seed placed starters used. You have to know what you are doing, or seed placed could be a problem, rather than an enhancer.
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The selling of seed placed starters!
