Do-It-Yourself Foam Marker

Do-It-Yourself Foam Marker SPRAYING Accessories 18-3-7 When Virgil Fuchs built himself a 90-ft. wide field sprayer, he needed an easy-tosee marking system for the extra wide booms. After tossing the idea around, he came up with a simple design for his own foam marker that uses standard over-theshelf components. Power is supplied to the air system by a pair of inexpensive 12-volt powered air compressors. "They're the type designed to plug into your car's cigarette lighter. They're on sale all the time for $16 to $19 at discount stores," says Fuchs. He wired them into the tractor's electrical system and put an on-off switch for each marker in the cab. The compressors attach to the booms with mounting brackets Fuchs made. Air is pumped into 5-gal. plastic pails filled with standard foam marker solution. A tire valve stem is fitted to the bottom of each pail and hooked up to the compressor. A 15-ft. 1 1/4-in. plastic pipe runs out the top of each pail and out to the end of the boom (he has 8-ft. "breakaway" sections on each end of the sprayer). When he wants to drop a glob of foam, he just switches on the marker at either end (or both at once) which blows air up through the soap solutions and forces foam out the marker tube. "The compressor only runs when you need the foam so it's not hard on them. They're cheap and easy to replace when they do wear out," says Fuchs. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Virgil Fuchs, 40949 275th St., Belgrade, Minn. 56312 (ph 612 254-3341).

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