Operator comfort enhanced in new John Deere 400, 600 Series Sprayers

BONDURANT, Iowa — Operators will find comfort and convenience in the cabs of the new John Deere 400 and 600 Series Sprayers.

There are three models of 400 Series Sprayers available, including the 408R with an 800-gallon tank, the 410R with a 1,000-gallon tank and the 412R with a 1,200-gallon tank.

For the 600 Series Sprayers, the 612R sprayer has a 1,200-gallon tank and the 616R sprayer has a 1,600 gallon-tank. In addition, the 400R and 600R can be equipped with a dry spinner applicator.

The sprayers care available with a 90-, 100- or 120-foot steel boom, as well as a 120- or 132-foot carbon-fiber spray boom.

“In the cab you’ll notice a lot of changes,” said Hanna Moore, product marketing representative, during the John Deere Media Event. “The ultimate package comes with an ActiveSeat II to give customers more in-cab suspension to make sure they are as comfortable as possible for as long as possible.”

The seat swivels 24 degrees to the right and left and there is a ventilated, heated and massage option.

“Our cab has a larger refrigerator, more USB ports and a 6.5-inch touchscreen radio equipped with Bluetooth and compatible with satellite radio,” Moore said. “With the quieter cab, customers can hear while they’re talking hands free on their phones.”

The mirrors on both sides of the John Deere Sprayers are electronically adjustable.

“You can make adjustments from inside the cab and you will also be able to see more with the LED lights,” Moore said.

“Exciting new technologies that can be monitored and adjusted from the in-cab display include the pressure recirculation and product reclaim,” she said.

“With pressure recirculation we’re able to keep product in suspension in the booms which will increase the quality of the spray as the product leaves the boom,” she said. “Couple that with product reclaim which takes the extra product that isn’t used and brings in back into the tank which saves you cost because typically that product would be wasted.”

BoomTrac Pro 2 is offered on the new John Deere Sprayers.

“This is aimed at maintaining the height accuracy going through hilly areas and it is 22% more accurate than our previous system,” Moore said.

See & Spray Select is an advanced spraying technology available on the new John Deere Sprayers.

“This is targeted, spraying green on fallow ground, which is a used in arid geographies,” said Kaylene Ballesteros, with John Deere. “From testing on 75,000 acres, there is a 77% herbicide savings on average versus broadcast because you are only spraying certain weeds.”

“There are 36 cameras mounted on a 120-foot boom so at 12 mph, every second the cameras are looking at over 2,000 square feet,” added Ryan Stien, product manager for See & Spray.

“The image processor modules process the images and look for green and when green is detected, it turns on the corresponding ExactApply nozzle,” Stien said.

“There are two things the ExactApply does — it provides individual on-off control to just turn on the nozzle I need to spray a weed,” he said. “And it’s a highly productive broadcast sprayer so if a customer wants to broadcast spray he can change the mode from the display.”

After the nozzle sprays the customer will see the documentation in the cab.

“It will show the checkerboard of where we’ve sprayed individual weeds,” Stien said. “When the job is done, the customer has access to that data on the John Deere Operations Center where he can see the percent of the field he didn’t spray.”

With less spraying, that means less tendering.

“You don’t have to fill the tank as much so you have more time to spend in the field and you are able to justify using a more expense or complex tank mix,” Ballesteros said.

“Research shows weeds sprayed with complex tank mixes with more than two modes of action are 83 times less likely to be herbicide resistant,” she said. “We have a 98% hit rate with See & Spray which is a level of control consistent with broadcast spraying.”

For more information about John Deere 400 and 600 Series Sprayers, go to JohnDeere.com.