REGINA — Salford displayed a new offering in its 8600 pull-type pneumatic boom applicator lineup at Canada’s Farm Progress show.
The 8611 has an 11-tonne capacity and is capable of variable rate application, side-to-side sectional control and applying two products at the same time.
“What makes this particular machine unique is the control systems,” said Salford’s Mark Van Veen.
The 11 tonne, or 357 cubic foot hopper, has a built-in hopper panel, which is used to create two separate hoppers.
The main hopper has two feeder chains with separate drive lines powered by hydraulic motors.
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“Because we have hydraulic motors to control it, and individually controlled hydraulic motors on each side, there are two things that we can accomplish,” Van Veen said.
“One is variable rating fertilizer by slowing or speeding up the hydraulic motors…. The other thing it allows us to do is sectional control.”
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A third hydraulic motor drives the meter roller shaft in the smaller front hopper. Two meter rollers on the shaft, one for each side of the pneumatic boom spreader, are engaged by an electric clutch on each side of the hopper. This also allows section control for the small hopper.
The sectional control is half a boom width, and the tractor’s computer controls the speed of the hydraulic motors that drive the application rates.
“You can buy a virtual terminal for this, but most of the people that will be running this will have virtual terminals in the cab, so this will plug and play with most other systems,” Van Veen said.
“So as an example, Case Pro 700, the John Deere 2630, the Trimble. You plug your ISO connector into the back of the cab, and its plug and play and will come up on your virtual terminal.”
The second hopper is for micronutrients, micro-fertilizers and chemicals, and it allows multiple products to be applied at the same time.
“So for example, you could put down fertilizer and you could put down Avadex or Edge, Treflan, or any of those chemicals at the same time,” he said.
“So it allows you to do multiple functions at multiple rates with the fertilizer and with the chemical, depending on what you want to do.”
The 8611 can apply 1,000 pounds per acre of urea at eight m.p.h. or as little as 50 lb. per acre at the same speed with a mechanical drive and the optional half rate kit.
The second meter in the smaller front hopper can achieve rates as high as 100 lb. per acre and as low as six lb. per acre.
“The speed that this one operates comfortably is around that 14 m.p.h. range,” Van Veen said.
“We have customers that run 10 m.p.h. up through 18. Depends on how smooth the ground is.”
Scales with a digital readout near the machine’s hitch are available, which allows operators to document the exact amount of product applied on each field.
“This unit has three point scales, so there are scales on the weigh bars on the tongue and then on the axles,” he said.
Boom widths of 66, 60, 57 and 54 feet are available.
Van Veen said the 8600 lineup is designed to accommodate row cropping.
“We have multiple boom spacing to be able to fit multiple row spacings such as corn, sugar beets or potatoes, which have different row spacing.”
Seven foot break-aways on the end of each boom are manually folded back before the rest of the boom is folded hydraulically for transport mode.
The machine is available with ground drive or hydraulic drive.
Fan options include a 1,000 r.p.m. power take-off driven fan or a hydraulically driven 17-inch fan, which operates at 4,700 r.p.m. Both fan options feed the stainless steel manifold through a nine-inch outlet.
Van Veen said the 8611 requires at least a 200 horsepower tractor.
“It doesn’t take significant horsepower to drive the system,” he said.
“The fan, all the motors and all of that, its roughly 40 gallons of flow is required for tractor-supplied hydraulics. The real issue is of course weight,” he said.
The 8611, with the hydraulic drives, sectional control, scales, and plug to tractor ISO controls lists at around $120,000, Van Veen said.
