DRIVING IMPRESSION: Saphir’s Grindstar is a different take on shallow cultivations, tilling no deeper than 3cm but still aiming to mix soil and trash to encourage weed seeds to germinate.
Blackgrass is not just a UK phenomenon; this prolific weed is also spreading to more areas in Germany along with volunteer oilseed rape and rye grass. Saphir believes its latest cultivator could be a post-harvest solution. Together with the University of Applied Sciences in Cologne it has developed the Grindstar, a ground-driven rotary cultivator for ultra shallow mixing of soil and harvest trash.
But it is not just the ground-engaging knives that led to the Grindstar wining a silver medal at Agritechnica last year. Saphir holds the patent on the special depth control system, which is based on pressure compensation and suspension that differentiate it from the likes of the Busa machine (refer to profi magazine 07/2023).
Spotlight on the rotors
The main frame consists of two 80mm x 80mm toolbars that carry the parallelogram mounted rotors. The latter are arranged in pairs and offset front to rear — one rotor in the pair tilts to the left, the other to the right. This rotor angle can be adjusted to one of
three positions to suit the soil conditions and
desired tilling effect.
At the same time, the rotors are slanted a little to the rear, which gives the knives a slight pitch. The knives on the following rotor should overlap 3cm with those on the leading rotors in order to achieve a full-width cut. This is the theory, although we were unable to achieve full width tilling on the day. Under different conditions, however, it should work as intended. We operated the new machine in the spring in uncultivated grain maize stubble on sandy soils where rye grass had been established as an undersown crop. Except for some minor bottlenecks, the machine was on top of the job mixing the grass and maize trash. More on this later.
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