Drum Fix For Cyclo Planters

Drum Fix For Cyclo Planters PLANTERS Planters 28-1-39 Crop Consultant Brian Freed says the most common complaint he's heard over the years from his clients who use Case IH Cyclo Early Riser drum planters was that seed spacing in the row was uneven. "When it comes to emergence, most feel it was better than other makes of planters, but they didn't like the poor seed spacing," Freed says. Convinced that this was also costing his clients yield, Freed began looking for the reason for uneven seed drop that led to poor plant spacing. "As I listened to the planter running, I noticed a continuous knocking or bumping sound. The source of this turned out to be the rubber wheels that shut off the vacuum and let the seeds drop down the seed tubes to the planting units. The wheels were bouncing into the dimples in the seed drum as they rolled," he says. Deciding that this bumping on the drum could cause the seed to drop unevenly, Freed had a local fabrication shop make a set of bands from flat aluminum stock that he could put over the drum in the path traveled by the cut-off wheels. Holes through the bands line up with the dimples in the seed drum, so the cut-off wheels still work properly. But since the dimples are gone from the wheel's path, there's no longer any bumping. "Our experience is that this corrects the spacing problem and makes all those old Cyclo planters out there into the superior machines they were intended to be," he says. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Brian Freed, Ag Focus, Inc., 25033 N 2225 E Rd., Lexington, Ill. 61753 (ph 309 365-2771; fax 309 365-2781; email: info@agfocus.com).

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