New ideas for more accurate and efficient tillage

Tuesday, August 5, 2014

A major European implement maker, who puts the emphasis on cost control without quality penalties, is targeting North American markets

by NORMAN DUNN

Anyone who has followed the world plowing championships over the years won't need to be told about Lemken, the European master plow-maker producing the light blue implements that have won this award many times. Based in north Germany, the family firm has been making plows for over 230 years now – ever since Wilhelmus Lemken first fired up his blacksmith's forge there in 1780.

Seven generations later, Nicola Lemken now leads the €363 million (C$541 million) turnover concern which is also producing cultivators, seed drills and sprayers. Currently, the firm has three manufacturing centres in western Europe as well as facilities in Russia, China and India. Global output last year topped 17,200 implements, with every fourth implement for cultivation, drilling and plant protection sold on the German market bearing the Lemken name.

Canada is one of the newer markets, started in 2005, but already four per cent of Lemken's export output from the European factories, worth around €15.4 million (C$23 million) last year, heads across the North Atlantic to dealers in Western Canada or Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes. This is just the start. Laurent Letzter, sales manager in Canada, sees excellent opportunities for the innovative Lemken cultivation machinery in all of Canada's cropping land and in the neighbouring United States. Quite apart from crop sprayers, which are not in the vanguard of Lemken introductions planned for North America, the emphasis is on relatively high-speed, deep and thorough cultivating units – and the possibility of teaming these up with drills and precision planters so that final cultivations and drilling can take place in a single acre-eating operation.

Bigger discs for better mixing
Already tested in Canadian working conditions and officially on the country's markets from this July is the mounted, semi-mounted or trailed compact disc harrow Rubin 12. The mounted implement comes with working widths of up to 13 feet 2 inches (four metres), the semi-mounted up to 20 feet (six metres). The Rubin differs from a lot of European cultivators because it digs in deep from the start with bigger-than-normal 736-millimetre (29 inches) diameter serrated concave discs that can efficiently break up and mix the top 20 centimetres (eight inches) of soil and trash – and that at 10 m.p.h.

Lemken designers aim for an implement that does a lot of jobs with a single pass. This rig features an impact harrow between two rows of overload-protected discs, intensifying the mixing and crumbling action, and then a levelling harrow after the last disc row. Both harrows have central depth adjustment and a self-locking system.

Lemken also mounts the discs in the first row to throw the soil in one direction (instead of alternate throwing action) and in the opposite direction with the second row. This is claimed to give much more level cultivation across the entire working width, with less draught requirement and no side-pull thanks to the symmetrical disc arrangement. All this adds up to a lot less strain on hitch and headstock and an easier life for the tractor driver.

Wear is also claimed to be much less than with standard tine cultivators. At the back, a wide choice of packer rollers can be fitted.  These can now safely weigh up to three tons with the new semi-mounted set-up, where a rear depth and transport wheel is lowered automatically as the three-point hitch is raised, allowing weight transfer from the rear tractor wheels and keeping the front wheels more firmly on the ground. 

Semi-mounting: a solution for smaller tractors
The market is full of big, heavy cultivators, but a lighter approach for medium and shallow stubble work and seedbed preparation should also be available, Lemken believes. This means a lower investment, too, as seen with the German company's Karat 9 three-beam intensive cultivator.

The Karat is available in four- and five-metre working widths with 70 centimetres between tine rows, now fitted with a light transport carriage and rear wheels. It comes with a choice of eight different types of quick-change tines, with optional overload protection and five packer roller types to choose from. Working depth is from five to 30 centimetres.

In the semi-mounted version, this machine works with hydraulically operated wheels at the back of the cultivation train. Karat semi-mounted cultivators can also feature the latest depth control system from Lemken: Contourtrac. This works with a hydraulic ram in the cultivator frame metering tillage depth according to impulses from force-sensor bolts at each support wheel. Result: high-speed work at consistent depth with no digging in or scraping out across field undulations. The standard depth adjustment for the tines in the eight-metre-long cultivator rig is not affected.

Single-pass seeding and constant seed depth
Also for sale in Canada is the company's Compact-Solitair drill and cultivator for single-pass seeding. This can feature a fitted power harrow or discs and large diameter packer rollers. The seed hopper capacity is 3,500 litres.

A move away from the former hydraulic control of parallelogram-controlled seed coulters in this setup now features much more cost-efficient "Optidisc" mechanical versions with coulter pressure manually adjusted with six settings up to 45 kilograms. The result is constant seed depth despite a high-speed operation. The twin coulter wheels for each seed spout allow optimum reconsolidation of the seeding row followed by firm pressuring of the seed into the soil, says Lemken.

The Solitair cultivator-seeder's three-point hitch behind the seed hopper also allows a precision corn planter to be used with the system. The seed hopper can then be used for fertiliser and is completely safe because the Solitair dosing unit is stainless steel.

Satellite tramline settings allow for more precision
Lemken drills can now include GPS-controlled tramline settings with the onboard Isobus computer system basing track sequences on field maps with GPS control. This means there's no need for the usual strict parallel passes to help ensure properly spaced tramlines.

With the company's "Tramlinecontrol" program, feeding in spraying width plus a preliminary drive around the field allows the computer to calculate correct sequences. From then on, the tractor operator can detour for obstacles or take much wider turns on the headlands, giving wider-spaced passes without the tramline sequence being disturbed. Avoiding the headland manoeuvring associated with side-by-side drilling passes not only saves time and seed, but also stops soil damage at field edges and saves a lot of fuel.

Lemken says its new GPS tramline control also allows more precise finishing in the field with automatic shut-down of drill spouts to prevent double-drilling in awkwardly shaped finishing strips.

Computerized plowing offers push-button control
Lemken has sold many of their world-famous Diamant and Juwel plows in Canada's corn areas, helped by their large clearances and low wear properties. But European farmers will be the first next season to try out a computerized plow concept from the firm. It's an Isobus system and billed as first of its kind, mounted on five-to-seven-furrow reversible Juwel plows and offering push-button control of turning the shares but also of settings such as share angle, furrow width and depth.

Optional is direct GPS contact and recording, as well as memory space for storing packer settings and required Hydromatic overload protection.  Chosen settings can be recalculated for four different scenarios – for instance, for plowing on slopes or for setting the plow up with a shallow last furrow. Inputs for individual fields can also be stored for a quicker start-up each season. BF