With a sprayer one of the key tools in maintaining crop health, South Australian, farmers Michael and Simon Allen have configured their latest self propelled to exacting needs.
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Taking delivery of a John Deere R4038 this year, Simon Allen, Keith, said they were keen to build a boom configuration to suit their mixed stock, cropping and lucerne property.
Key needs were boom recirculation and air induction (AI) nozzles to allow spraying at low water rates and open a wider spraying window.
Investigations settled on an Arag Seletron individual nozzle control system.
“We can't always choose our spray days, so we need to be able to confidently - without being stupid - open the spray window as much as we can,” Mr Allen said.
AI nozzles on their old machine were doing the job at low water rates (just 40 litres a hectare) and were a must, while the wider boom and faster spraying speeds have seen productivity leap ahead.
“If we get a good day, and your target is not too challenging, we can bump the speed up and it will kick both nozzles on allowing 25 kilometres an hour spraying at four bar,” Mr Allen said.
“This Arag system lets us go to 50 l/ha as a base rate so we can spray from 10 - 25 km/h within the ideal pressure range.”
The Arag Seletron system, fitted by Deere dealer Wickham Flower, features twin nozzle bodies providing individual nozzle control at 500 millimetre intervals on the 30 metre boom.
The bodies are fitted with 01 and 015 size nozzles.
“At lower speed and rates the system runs 01 by itself, and once we speed up it flicks over to 015,” Mr Allen said.
“015 nozzles do the bulk of the work as we have increased our water rates.”
The Arag recirculation system sees liquid feed in at both ends of the boom and again at about two thirds of the length of each wing.
A centre line returns liquid to the tank when it is not spraying and reverses to become a supply line when spraying maintaining the boom line pressure.
Individual nozzle control means there are no sections or section valves.
The Arag screen runs the sprayer, while the Deere screen provides pump pressure and steering.
The Deere controller has been fooled to think section valves are in place by fitting relays - otherwise warning signals are triggered.
“You type in constant pressure to supply boom with six bar and turn off the rate control from the Deere,” Mr Allen said.
“You put the Deere on your maximum spray pressure and that’s what it does - becomes almost a fixed displacement pump holding that pressure.
“We are very happy with it - the weeds are dead and the bugs are dead and it is all looking good.”
