Maintenance Free 3-In-1 Rake

Maintenance Free 3-In-1 Rake HAY & FORAGE HARVESTING Rakes (44) 15-5-21 "There's never been anything like it. It's the rake of the 90's - unique and trouble-free," says Nico Sieling, inventor and manufacturer of this new "maintenance-free" 3-in-1 rake that can be quickly configured to work as a side rake, V-rake or tedder. Sieling started from the ground up in designing his new rake. "I didn't like existing rakes because of all the maintenance they required, especially on rough or rocky ground, and because you could only use them one way. My new rake lets you adapt to changing conditions and you'll never break a tooth off this rig. Also, it only has two grease points," he says. The rake has four rotating wheels, each fitted with hollow rubber tires with tines sticking out of them. The tines are standard double-teeth spring tines lying on their sides. They lie loosely inside the tire - not bolted in place - but when the wheel starts turning, centrifugal force pushes them outward. Because of the way the holes are cut in the tires, the teeth are forced outward and angled toward the ground when the wheels turn. But because they're just lying loose inside the tire, if they hit an obstacle, they bounce back or inward without damage. The rake wheels each have their own hydraulic motor. Their hydraulic lines are all plumbed into the rake's rear lift assist wheels, which are fitted with hydraulic cylinders, so that if any of the wheels should be stopped or slowed up by an obstacle, oil backs up through the lines to the lift cylinders, automatically raising the entire rake up over the object. "It's simple. The opera-tor doesn't even have to think about it. The rake lifts itself up and over anything that gets in its way," says Sieling. The rake frame pivots at the center of the two main bars and each pair of rake wheels also pivot independently. The rake can be moved into a variety of configurations, as needed, held in place by short lengths of chain. For example, you can line the wheels up in an angled line to work like a side delivery rake. Or you can arrange them in a V to work like a standard V-type rake. For transport, the wheels close in directly be-hind the tractor. The two lift-assist wheels are steerable, which makes changing con-figuration easy and quick. To use the rake for tedding, you simply reverse the rotational direction of the tines by switching the hydraulic hoses on each wheel. "We've done more than 1,000 acres with our prototype machine without any trouble at all. Nothing's broken or even worn. It's worked better than we ever could have imagined," says Sieling, who's selling the rakes for $8,000. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Rotacon Engineering Ltd., RD 2, Clevedon, New Zealand (ph 64 9 2928-682; fax 64 9 597-9101.

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