Chopping wheels take on hardpan and root balls
Are you looking to have a violent confrontation with your B.t. corn root balls this year or need to deal with flood-toughened dirt?
Great Plains Manufacturing of Salina, Kansas, might have the tool for you.
The new Turbo-Chopper Triple Chisel features a row of mean-looking chopping wheels at the back designed to beat up on clumps, clogs and root balls and leave a smooth surface ready for planting.
“When you’re running tillage equipment designed to pull up hardpan and BT root balls, you’re looking at very aggressive shanks that are bound to leave a rough, uneven surface,” says Larry Lee, territory manager for Great Plains.
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“So, how are you going to work that smooth? You can go out with a cultivator or a disc with concave blades, but number one, that’s an extra pass.
“And number two, as soon as you make that extra pass, you start to create another hardpan layer. We’re supposed to be in the business of eliminating hardpan, not making more of it.”
Lee said Great Plains’ new Turbo Chopper Triple Chisel is designed specifically to eliminate that extra pass after ripping up hardpan.
He said the new chopping wheels handle all the clumps and clogs. They level the field surface and fill in the trenches. And because they’re mounted to the back of the vertical tillage implement, they eliminate the need for that extra field pass.
“So the hardpan layer you’ve just broken up stays broken up through the winter. That’s exactly what you want.”
Each chopper wheel is 18 inches in diameter and has a half dozen 4.5 inch high carbon steel blades. The unique spiral design puts it in constant contact with the soil to maximize cutting and soil mixing.
Because the chopper wheels run perpendicular to the front mounted coulters, a crisscross cutting pattern is created so all residue is sized from two directions in a single pass.
Up front, the regular Great Plains 22-inch diameter turbo blades are mounted on a tight 10 inch spacing to loosen the soil and remove root balls.
“What we’re doing here is vertical tillage. We’re breaking up hardpan. But before you can do that, you have to determine exactly how deep that hardpan runs. Then you go at it right at that level.
“We’re typically going down eight to 10 inches and pulling this thing at six to 6.5 (m.p.h.). We do that because we have to fracture that subsurface hardpan.”
He said the blades are mounted at an angle to the chopper wheels so the implement can do a better job of chopping residue and still maintain the benefits of vertical tillage.
The three-inch square C-shanks are mounted in 211 rubber cushioned cast bearings. The first set of shanks are on 30-inch centres, with 2,450-pound trips.
“They’re intended to stay put in the ground and bust up that hardpan. They get down there and re-set that soil profile.
“The second set of shanks come along about an inch and a half shallower. They clean up whatever might have been missed by the first set. And then of course, those chopper wheels come along and fill it all in and smooth it out.”
For more information, contact Lee at 701-367-1721 or visit www.greatplainsmfg.com.
