REGINA – A new packing force sensor for the Seedmaster air drill was recently introduced at the Master Seeder conference in Regina.
“This is partially out of laziness,” said Norbert Beaujot, who operates a 1,400 acre farm near Langbank, Sask., and is also president of Straw Track Manufacturing.
“I want to know what the drill is doing but I don’t want to get off the tractor a whole lot of times to find out what’s happening.”
Beaujot said he figured there must be a simple way to know what’s happening behind his seeder.
Read Also
VIDEO: Green Lightning and Nytro Ag win sustainability innovation award
Nytro Ag Corp and Green Lightning recieved an innovation award at Ag in Motion 2025 for the Green Lightning Nitrogen Machine, which converts atmospheric nitrogen into a plant-usable form.
“When you go through the field with any terrain-following opener, there’s a few unknowns. One of those is how the soil is reacting to the knives as far as vertical and horizontal forces,” Beaujot said.
“You give it a certain amount of downward force with your hydraulic cylinder and that force stays constant. But what we don’t know in the formula is how much of a force is on these knives. With more drag force or vertical force on the knives, does it reduce or increase the packing pressure?”
Until 2006, Beaujot said he didn’t know.
“I tried to figure out a simple way to monitor the way the soil reacts, and this is what I came up with. We tested on my drill last year and we’ve got it ready for the market. It was a fast development because we used off-the-shelf components that are used in livestock scales. The load sensor is a very common item in the industry.”
Beaujot wanted to know the packing force, so he positioned the sensor on the portion of the opener arm behind the rest of the forces.
“The fertilizer knife penetration and drag, plus the seed knife penetration drag forces, have already been taken off the system,” he said.
“All that’s left is the packing force. By putting in a strain gauge and having a readout in the cab, you can see continuously what’s happening and how the soil is affecting the drill.”
Only one sensor is required on one opener, to provide a sampling of how the forces are reacting for the whole drill. Beaujot mounted his unit away from the wheel tracks to obtain an average effect.
“In the cab there’s a little digital monitor, set so it analyzes a few seconds of data and gets a continuous readout. Because the forces are always changing, we’ve got it analyzing a few seconds of data and giving you an average.”
He could tell when the drill was crossing combine tracks from the previous year by shortening the duration of time from which he took the sample. While it isn’t yet set up for field mapping, Beaujot said it could be because it’s a digital output.
“I’m not doing that right now. Eventually the plan is to link that with our pressure setting on the machine. You’ll always need the readout in the cab and the digital sensor. But we’ll add a third device that, if you want a 100 pounds force on the packer wheel, it will keep adjusting the shank pressures to keep it there.”
In the first year of trials, Beaujot noticed more variations than he expected.
“It was quite surprising. I’ve been zero tilling for 17 years and I thought my land was quite mellow and uniform because it has been treated the same way for a long time. But even from one part of the same field to another, there were variations of 30 to 40 percent in the packing force.
“At one pressure setting, it could vary from 80 to 140 lb. across the same field, with the same stubble and no recognizable difference in terrain.
“Going from field to field, quite often there was a variation of well over 100 percent difference. Without a device like this, you really don’t know.”
He can adjust packing pressure on the go, depending on the field.
“I had one field I noticed quite a variation from one end of the field to the other. On that field, I was adjusting it partway down the field. It’s quick to adjust, so you can do that if you want to. But typically it’s just having a sample. If you saw it vary from 20 to 120, for sure you would adjust it.”
Beaujot said the objective with any terrain-following opener is to maintain firm pressure against the ground with the packer wheel.
“If you lose that, you get a wreck because you’ve lost your depth control and your packing.
“As an extreme example, I seeded some land for a neighbour who has cattle and he had cattle on this piece of land. I went out with my pressure at the typical 1,100 psi on the hydraulic system, looked at my monitor and was getting no packing. It was right at zero. So I had to crank it to 1,500 psi and then I was getting decent packing. I wouldn’t have known that if I hadn’t had this device on.”
Beaujot said the Seedmaster drill doesn’t lift the toolbar at super-high packing pressures.
“You can put 1,500 psi and at that pressure, you’re getting 200 to 250 lb. of downward force per opener.”
The drill can provide a wide range of packing pressures.
“I know that zero is too low and I know from experience where it’s too high on my land. The soil type will determine what the upper limit is,” he said.
“You can lose more by overpacking and quite often you tend to crank it up if you’re not sure because you want to make sure you’re packing. Yet, if you’re in a clay soil, that can make it difficult for the seedling to come through if you overdo it.
“On my land, with a four inch wide packer wheel, I’m happy with anywhere from 90 to 130 lb. of downward force.”
The Seedmaster drill uses pneumatic tires for a packer wheel. Air pressure in the packer can be adjusted, depending on seeding conditions.
“In heavier clays, we’re telling people to lower their packing pressure,” he said.
“When you lower your tire pressure, your tire squats out wider so it covers more ground. It also rides more on the shoulders of the furrow. For people that don’t have the heavy clay, you’re better off keeping the tire pressure at around 12 psi. But when mud is the issue and you’re in a clay region, you don’t want much packing.”
Beaujot said he expects to learn a lot from the new packing sensor over the next few years.
“Every farm will be different and every stubble will be different. You go into a flax stubble and it’s hard, compared to canola stubble. It’s not a real high tech thing, but it will save you a bit of money from time to time, plus the peace of mind without getting on and off the tractor.”
Beaujot said the packing pressure sensor is about a $2,000 option, and adjusts to fit any Seedmaster drill.
