His Invention Rolls Up Used Plastic Grain Bags

His Invention Rolls Up Used Plastic Grain Bags CROPS Miscellaneous There’s good news for farmers who are looking for a way to roll up used grain bags C Wiesner Welding Ltd of Saskatchewan builds a hydraulic roller that does the work for you virtually hands-free Chad Wiesner says he started building the rollers when a neighboring farmer who he does repairs for asked if he could fabricate a machine to roll up the used plastic on his farm Wiesner says “There just wasn’t much out there at the time so I built one myself Now I have 3 models and have sold more than 100 units around Saskatchewan Alberta Manitoba and even a few in the U S and Australia ” Weisner’s grain bag rollers have a sturdy steel frame and can be mounted on a skid steer on the pallet forks of a front-end loader or on a trailer They’re powered by an orbit motor using 15 to 20 gal per minute oil flow A gas power pack is available Weisner says the skid steer and loader- mounted models are very popular because the operator can raise or lower the roller to different heights “When the roll is filled they can drop the finished ‘bale’ onto a pickup truck or trailer to haul it away ” says Wiesner His trailer-mounted model has a hydraulic kicker lift that raises a completed bale of plastic out of the machine and drops it on the trailer floor All of the models inlcude a twine dispenser so the finished roll can be tied Wiesner says he designed the roller so it’s very easy to use “The operator just hooks the end of the plastic on the tapered shaft then starts and stops the rolling motion with a lever that controls the hydraulics Once you get it started it pretty much rolls itself ” The roller winds up to 300 ft of plastic on one roll Wiesner says “The only trick a person needs to learn to unload a roll is to reverse the shaft and jerk it a bit to loosen the inside of the bale ” Two horizontal feeder bars on the front of the machine help remove old grain grass dirt or snow as a roll is made and two upright steel bars guide the plastic Large steel plates on both sides of the roller provide operator safety and a hard edge for the bale to form The roller is priced from $6 000 to $7 500 Canadian depending on options Saskatchewan residents can qualify for a government rebate of about 50 percent of the roller purchase price using the Farm Stewardship Program which is an effort to eliminate farm plastics from local landfills Wiesner says rolling the bags makes it much easier for farmers to handle and store them at their farm and to bring the rolled plastic bales to recyclers Contact: FARM SHOW Followup C Wiesner Welding Ltd P O Box 77 Muenster Sask S0K 2Y0 Canada ph 306 682-3233; www cwiesnerwelding ca

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