Precision Planting develops products to improve sprayer operation

BOONE, Iowa — Precision Planting is developing new products to help farmers improve their spraying operation.

“We are working on three new products and ReClaim will likely come out this fall,” said Andrew Feucht, product marketing specialist for Precision Planting.

ReClaim is a recirculation system for sprayer booms.

“The idea is we can prime the booms without spraying anything on the ground and wasting any product,” Feucht said. “And it is also for clean-out, so you can get all the product out and circulate it back to the tank.”

“The nice thing is you don’t need electronic nozzles,” he said.

“In most systems on the market now you need electronic nozzles to keep the product from spraying out,” he said. “But we recirculate at a low pressure that is lower than the check value, so traditional nozzles are fine.”

Symphony is designed to maintain the droplet size and pressure when changing sprayer speeds or rates.

“You get a consistent spray pattern and the coverage you’re supposed to have for the products you’re spraying regardless of the rate and speed,” Feucht said. “You get swath control and turn compensation with that, as well.”

Precision Planting plans to beta test Symphony during the 2023 growing season.

“It may be a year after that for commercial release,” Feucht said.

Vision uses cameras, vision technology and artificial intelligence to do guidance of the sprayer for scouting, crop health evaluation or see and spray weed identification.

“This is more of a long-term project,” Feucht said.

All of these products are retrofit technologies.

“A lot of companies are working on this technology, but it’s primarily for new sprayers, but we’re going to be able to retrofit it on old sprayers,” Feucht said.

A new product was released by Precision Planting in August.

“It is very common for growers to replace parallel arms as the bolts and bushings wear out,” Feucht said. “DuraWear are replacement arms for John Deere planters.”

Standard parallel arms have one bushing and as the bushing and bolt wears out they start to vibrate.

“It will wear into an uneven shape on the parallel arm and that starts to affect your row unit ride, which affects your spacing and downforce, so you end up with a yield loss,” Feucht said.

Replacing parallel arms is a normal part of planter maintenance.

“DuraWear has a two-part bushing — a harder outer bushing and a softer inner bushing,” Feucht said. “So, the softer inner bushing is the one that wears and as it wears out you replace that and the bolts, but the outer bushing and parallel arms will last a lot longer.”

The lower parallel arm comes with a built-in DeltaForce bracket.

“Growers going to our DeltaForce hydraulic downforce system don’t have the cost of an additional bracket because it is built in,” Feucht said.

The frequency of replacing parallel arms, Feucht said, depends on field conditions.

“I’ve talked to growers who replace them every two to three years,” he said. “We know the DuraWear parallel arms will last longer than the ones from the original equipment manufacturer.”