Fold-Up 80 Ft Sprayer

Fold-Up 80 Ft Sprayer SPRAYING Miscellaneous 15-4-11 A Canadian farmer who didn't like the sprayers he saw on the market built his own "fold-up" 80-ft. sprayer for less than $5,000. Darius Tschetter, Crooked Creek, Alberta, used the wide flotation tires and axle off a Deere 95 pull-type combine together with a home-built chassis and boom and an 800-gal. polyethylene tank. The boom is built in five sections with two sections on each side folding up for transport. "It's much easier to move from field to field than sprayers that fold back for transport," says Tschetter. "I used it to spray 4,000 acres last year without any problems. I had been using a sprayer that had to be folded back manually. Folding the sprayer backward was time-consuming and caused crop damage. Now all I do is flip a hydraulic lever. It takes only about 30 seconds to fold or unfold the sprayer and there's no crop damage. I also saved money. New commercial sprayers of comparable size cost $15,000 to $20,000." The middle section of the sprayer is equipped with two 32-in. long, 3 1/2-in. dia. hydraulic cylinders. To fold the sprayer the cylinders pull the two inside boom sections up as the ends of the boom drop down. A small wheel mounted on each end of the boom guides the outside sections as they fold up. When the outside, sections reach a 45 degree angle a pair of cables tighten and cause disc markers mounted on each end of the boom to lift up off the ground. Tschetter used 3 by 5 steel tubing to build the sprayer's frame and 2 by 2 steel tubing to build the boom, which is sup-ported by four old tires from a Toyota pickup. Sprayer is driven by a centrifugal hydraulic pump and solenoids are electrically controlled from the tractor seat. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Darius Tschetter, Box 1, Crooked Creek, Alberta, Canada TOH OYO (ph 403 957-2607).

To read the rest of this story, download this issue below or click here to register with your account number.