Prototyped and shown at both Ag in Motion and Canada’s Farm Progress Show in 2018, Seedmaster’s Ultra single-rank air was officially launched at Ag in Motion and will see a full production year in 2020.
Anthony Bigleini, sales manager for Seedmaster, tells RealAgriculture’s Kara Oosterhuis that the Ultra SR is the first precision single-rank air drill of its style.
A single rank of shanks on a timed precision drill hasn’t been tried and tested before, because when you line up all the shanks in a row, without any kind of residue management, it really plugs up quickly and becomes a harrow bar. To solve the issue, the Ultra SR makes use of newly designed residue/trash wheel. “It’s a tyne-spoked wheel that is ground-engaged and ground-driven, and really eliminates that chance of plugging up due to trash. Stops any hesitation, stops any balling up, and just encourages it to get moved through,” he says.
Currently, you can get the 60-foot, 14-inch spacing drill at certified retailers across Western Canada and North America, and it is retailing at a list price of $580,000.
For 2020, producers can look forward to a dry-product-only version of the Ultra SR, but Biglieni says the hope is to have liquid- or anhydrous ammonia-ready versions for the years following.
When it comes to questions about the drill, Biglieni says producers have shown real interest in the gauge wheel on the outer drum.
“It’s actually a steel drum on it, and a lot of people think ‘steel drum, that’s what my dad ran. Why do you have that?’. Well, old tested things do actually work. So we used a steel drum because it solves a problem that a tire was actually causing,” he says. “We’re able to control the physical size, shape, and pitch of the steel drum, and it eliminated our problem which was dirt ridging and tight turns. What you might think is old school, does still solve a lot of problems.”
To learn more, check out the video below:
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