Seeing more of the dealers getting the ground driven spreaders around here. Do they do as good as the pto driven spreaders? One of the dealers said as long as you go 1 mph or faster they had the same spread width.
jkwilson":3do0h1te said:Our dealer uses the ground driven. I like them. I get an even spread, and no worries about dirty hydraulic oil from the previous user. Spread pattern seems to stay close to the same width even when I slow down to turn or climb a hill, but the feed rate drops to keep the application rate close.
Jim62":3gegv3wh said:I had never thought of that when using pto spreaders. For some reason, I guess I thought that the feed chain thing was run by the ground on them, too. Have not used a pto spreader in a long time. Just put out 6 tons of 43-0-0 the other day. It was $345 / ton. I may have not gotten it totally even, but I did get it all inside the fences. :lol:
Jim62":18d57jrn said:I had never thought of that when using pto spreaders. For some reason, I guess I thought that the feed chain thing was run by the ground on them, too. Have not used a pto spreader in a long time. Just put out 6 tons of 43-0-0 the other day. It was $345 / ton. I may have not gotten it totally even, but I did get it all inside the fences. :lol:
DiamondSCattleCo":1h0mdjzy said:Larry, what,
Depends on the breed of PTO unit. Full PTO drives, a couple of which we happen to have in the shop right now, will turn both feed chain and fan by PTO. Since the PTO is RPM dependent, not ground speed dependent, reducing ground speed without reducing PTO speed means that you will leave more fertilizer behind. Its like a crop sprayer without ground speed regulators. As a general rule of thumb, these tend to be fancier units with in-cab rate controllers. To be fair, when they are used properly they are capable of very good accuracy (do your headlands, then shut the unit off at the ends when making your back and forth passes).
Other units include PTO (or engine) driven fans with ground speed feeds. These units will of course not vary application rate/acre since the rate is still controlled by ground speed, only fan RPM is PTO (or engine RPM) dependent. I haven't seen many of these, although fan spreaders in my country aren't used all that much anymore. Most guys float it on with a truck or Valmar-style spreader since the application rates are more accurate. Either that or they put it on with a bander (absolute best way of doing it).
And then of course there are full ground driven units, which I prefer due to simplicity.
Rod