Adjust No Till Coulter Depth

Adjust no till coulter depth PLANTERS Planters 16-2-25 Brock Baxter, Ranger, Ga., came up with a nifty way to adjust the existing factory microswitches on his Deere 700016-row planter to automatically change frame height - and therefore the depth of frame-mounted Rawson no-till coulters - to adapt to different planting conditions. The planter is equipped with factory-installed microswitches that are designed to open or close solenoid valves. The valves control the flow of oil between the master cylinder and lift wheel slave cylinders that raise or lower the planter frame. One microswitch controls lift wheel cylinders on the planter's center section and another microswitch controls both planter wings. Each microswitch is activated by rotating on a cam. By using an alien wrench to reset the cam positio, Baxter can adjust coulter depth according to varying soil conditions. "I was looking fora way to adjust coulter depth to different planting conditions," says Baxter. "I was all set to weld adjustable stops on the planter's lift wheel assemblies when my neighbor, Richard Weaver, said that he thought I might be able to control the height of the planter frame by adjusting the micro switches. Lo and behold, it worked perfectly. It's a simple way to adjust planter frame height and it saves a lot of time. Normally, the position of the cams is set only once to control height of the planter frame. Adjusting coulter depth would have required building some kind of mechanical stop on each of the planter's eight lift wheels, or unbolting all 32 coulters and mechanically repositioning them - a job that would have taken up to two hours. However, adjusting the position of the cams lets me change height of the planter frame in one minuteorless. Theharderthe soil, the lower I drop the frame to increase down pressure on the coulters." Baxter has a pair of Rawson fluted coulters mounted ahead of each row unit of the planter. The offset coulters create a 6-in. wide "zone till" seedbed. Contact FARM SHOW Followup, Brock Baxter, 5680 Redbud Road N.E., Ranger, Ga. 30734 (ph 404 629-6525).

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