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Rolling Chopper tough on trash

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Published: October 12, 2006

FARGO, N.D. – The Summers Rolling Chopper is a new trash management tool intended to eliminate the need for farmers to buy an expensive air drill designed for high residue seeding situations.

Introduced this year at the Big Iron Show in Fargo, the Rolling Chopper is a heavy steel cylinder with hardened cutting blades bolted to the outer circumference. The cutting edges of the blades slice the surface at 10 inch intervals as the drum rolls over the field.

To make sure the drums attack all residue the coulter might miss, they are mounted behind the wave cutting coulters, which are also spaced 10 inches apart.

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“If you make a single pass with the combination Super Coulter and Rolling Chopper at seven to nine mph, you can seed into that field with just about any kind of seeding implement you might have available,” said Pete Almen, chief engineer for Summers Manufacturing in Devils Lake, N.D.

“The Super Coulter and the Rolling Chopper are designed to work together to chop residue to a specific size – 10 inches. We originally built this because of requests from soybean, corn and pea growers who were having trouble managing residue.”

He explained that no-till soybean growers were the first to express a need for some sort of special residue management tool. On no-till bean ground, the residue cover would accumulate to a depth of three inches or more. The mud below the cover would not dry out or warm up in time for seeding the subsequent crop.

Almen said this isn’t a problem in small grains because so many no-till drills easily handled that residue. If small grain residue builds to the point of causing problems, a tine harrow generally takes care of it.

“But tines do not work on stalks and vines. Our engineering challenge was to either figure out a way to pick up the residue uniformly and turn it over, or else slice right through it. We decided to slice through it and the coulter was our first step in that direction.”

The Summers wave coulter introduced in 1998 was effective at cutting trash that lined up properly, but like any cutting coulter, it suffered from a geometry problem.

Almen said there is always a limitation to what a coulter can cut.

“A coulter cuts residue that’s laying on the ground 90 degrees to the orientation of the disc as it rolls over. Obviously, anything that’s already 180 degrees to the direction of the coulter get pushed aside.”

No matter how sharp or aggressive the coulter may be, there’s always a lot more of the residue that doesn’t line up perfectly. Most of the residue gets pushed aside so it rests 180 degrees to the coulter. It ends up laying in the same direction the coulter has run.

At first glance, that geometry problem may be bad for the first pass of the trash management cutting coulter. However, it’s perfect if the operator can figure a way to come along with another cutting device immediately following the coulter, but at a 90 degree angle.

That’s what Almen saw when he watched the Super Coulter in action. His challenge was to figure out the best way to deal with residue lined up in the direction of tractor travel.

To begin with, he placed all the cutting wave coulters on a 10 inch spacing. Next, the Summers engineer came up with what he calls the Rolling Chopper.

He mounted these steel cylinders on the last tool bar of the cultivator frame so they could catch every piece of straw and stalk the coulters brushed aside. The bolt-on replaceable blades were positioned to cut the residue into 10 inch pieces.

“Every piece that misses being cut into 10 inch lengths by the coulter is perfectly lined up for the Rolling Chopper blades that follow on 10 inch centres. There’s no way anything escapes the blades – ever.”

With residue cut into 10 inch lengths, there are more open ends exposed to the atmosphere. The residue decomposes much faster than if it’s left in the original lengths or chomped on with a conventional cultivator.

He said ideally, the Super Coulter Rolling Chopper combination should be used in dry conditions when residue is brittle. However, farmers can’t always pick their weather.

Almen said that in wet conditions when the residue is flexible, there is some hair pinning. A certain amount of residue can get jammed into the mud so it’s left standing straight up.

“But we’ve figured out a way to almost eliminate hair pinning and mud clogging. We’ve got the chopper blades angled back. They’re tilted to the rear at 15 degrees. They enter the soil vertically for maximum cutting effect but they exit the soil horizontally so they throw the mud and residue back slightly.”

He said the machine should run at seven to nine mph, so there’s enough centrifugal force to throw the mud out backward.

He adds that in the worst possible conditions, the Rolling Choppers can still plug up with mud and wrap with residue.

“In our field tests so far, it’s worked very well on corn, sunflower, pea vines, beans, wheat straw, canola, any crop we’ve tried. It works best in the fall right after harvest, but you can use it in the spring before you go out seeding.”

Another unique feature is the hydraulic hitch system. Two large hydraulic cylinders allow the operator to transfer weight from the front gang to the rear gang or the rear gang to the front gang.

“In normal conditions, you’ll run equal pressure on the front and rear gangs,” Almen said.

“But in hard dry conditions where you need more penetration, you can shift the weight. You gain the most down pressure if you tilt the frame forward. This leverages more weight to the rear gangs. You can actually double the weight on the rear gangs if you need to.”

The largest size Summers Super Coulter with Rolling Choppers is 40 feet and sells for $63,000 US.

For more information, contact Summers at 800-732-4347.

About the author

Ron Lyseng

Ron Lyseng

Western Producer

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