Insulation Blower Powers Seed Handling System

Insulation Blower Powers Seed Handling System PLANTERS Planters 25-6-19 Putting together a pneumatic bulk seed transfer system without an airlock proved to be a little more involved than Jim Hefner anticipated, but the Lima, Ohio farmer persevered. "My idea was that if you could put seed into a pressurized tank, you wouldn't need to have an air lock," he says. With that in mind, he welded together an airtight tank that measures 5 by 5 by 4 ft. He used 12 and 14 gauge sheet metal for the sides and reinforced the corners with 4 by 4 by 1/4-in. angle iron. He made a 2-ft. square lid and put rubber weather-stripping seals around the opening to prevent air leakage. The tank, which holds two mini-bulk bags or pro-boxes (about 100 units of seed), sits on a frame made of channel iron. "The channel iron makes pockets, so we can pick it up with our forklift," he explains. He transports the tank on a flatbed trailer. Also mounted on the frame with the tank is a blower salvaged from an insulation blowing machine. The blower is powered by a new horizontal shaft Briggs & Stratton 5 hp gasoline engine. Rather than a belt drive, he used a Lovejoy coupler to attach the blower shaft directly to the engine shaft. He uses 3-in. vacuum hose to move seed. To make the system work, he decided he had to put some air back into the tank through the top. He installed a pop-off valve to keep pressure in the tank from rising above 5 psi. "We added a T and a throttling valve in the line just below the tank and, using a small hose, put one to two lbs. of pressure in through the top of the tank. That gets the seed flowing," he explains. Seed drops out of the tank into the 3-in. dia. hose below. Just 2 to 3 lbs. of pressure, in high volume will pump 4 to 5 bags of seed per minute. He's found that with his system, he doesn't need a cyclone at the end of the hose as some commercial systems have. "We decided to try it without one at first and it worked fine, so we felt there was no need to add that weight to the end of the hose," he says. "You need to keep the end of the hose at or below the surface of the seed box because seed comes out with some speed." While it saved him a lot of time and effort at planting time last year, Hefner thinks the design could be improved. "If I did it again I'd make the tank cylindrical rather than like a cube with square corners. This one begins to bulge a little when we turn on the air. A round tank will empty out a lot easier, too," he says. Hefner says he might make a multi-compartment tank, too, so he could have more than one variety of seed available in the field. He'd also like a remote switch on the operator end of the hose, so he wouldn't need a second person to turn it on and off. "Right now, it's still a two-man operation," he admits. "And the next one will probably have its own running gear, so we wouldn't have to set it on and off the trailer," he says. Hefner says his actual out-of-pocket was under $500 for the seed handling system. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Jim Hefner, 7375 Harding Hwy., Lima, Ohio 45801 (ph 419 225-9743; fax 419-222-7117).

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