DRIVING IMPRESSION: There is no shortage of choice on the tine-based Zone drill: leading discs, two or three rows of coulters, rear press wheels or integrated depth wheels. But one thing Philip Bramley wants to retain is keeping it light enough for less tractor power.
Having cut his teeth developing a pan- busting tool bar and disc coulter system to mount on power harrow drills, farmer Philip Bramley has now devised a modular tine coulter drill with a specific emphasis on keeping the machine light enough for modest horsepower. Indeed, the 6.0m wide version can be operated with as little as 150hp.
Depending on the adaptable layout — three rows of coulters, depth wheels and following harrow or leading disc, two rows of coulters and rear press wheels — the weight of the rear drilling unit can be as little as 1,500kg or as much as 2,500kg. Also doing its part to keep the total power requirement low is the 25cm coulter spacing — on 12mm points the 24- coulter, 6.0m version is moving just 288mm of metal through the ground at drilling depth.
Even when band sowing with the 100mm wide points, this width of metal in soil figure only increases to 2.4m — still a lot less than you would move with some cultivators … or at least that’s the Bramleys logic and one that seems to fit following our from our time in the field.
The balance
The Zone drill has a 2,000-litre front hopper, which makes good sense as most UK and Irish tractors of this size now come with a front linkage. This also helps to reduce the rear lift requirement and therefore the size of tractor, which, in turn, means a lighter, better balanced drilling rig. The empty hopper alone weighs in at 600kg, which should be enough to act as an effective counter balance.
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