Wednesday, January 21, 2015

We have had the corn planter in the shop this week.  This machine is a Case-IH model 1250, 24-row no till planter.  It was purchased in the summer of 2011, and has planted the corn crops for 2012, 2013, and 2014.    Check the posts for August 17 and 18, 2011 for the arrival of this machine to the farm.   After these 3 years, the openers were showing some wear… not bad, but ready for this repair.  Instead of trading off the planter for a new one, we decided to re-build the row opener units.  It’s a cost-saving method.  This shop work will get 1-2 more years of service out of this machine.

The opener blades are the soil-engaging parts on each row.  They open the seed trench into which is placed the precious seed.  They are circular disks, 14 inches in diameter, mounted at about a 7º angle to each other.  One blade runs just ahead of the other, making for the narrowest of slots in the soil.  When these blades wear down to 13.5″ in diameter, (and these were) they are due for replacement.

To complete this task, the row ‘cleaners’ were removed, then the depth-gauging wheels, and finally the opener disks.  New opener disk blades were installed, then the gauge wheels reassembled, and then the row cleaners.

To get a feel for what John and Brandon have accomplished, here are some pictures.

Here you see one side of the planter with the removed parts lying on the shop floor beneath.

Here is one row unit up close. The row cleaner, opener blades, and gauge wheels are removed. To the left of the picture you see the press wheel (a rubber-tired wheel that firms the soil over the seed).  Just in front of that, you can see the closing disks (a pair of small disks that pull soil back over the seed after it has been placed in the seed trench).

Here you see the row unit partially reassembled. The critical parts, the opener disks, are now installed. They come with new bearings in the center.  The seed is singulated just above these disks, and gently drops down a tube tucked in behind them.  The closing disks cover the seed, and the press wheel firms the soil around and above the seed.

Here you see the gauge wheels added. These rubber-tired wheels are adjusted by the planter’s operator to determine the depth of the seed trench. That can vary from 1 to 2+ inches, depending on the soil conditions and the post-planting weather forecast.

Finally, you see the ‘row cleaner’ attachment reinstalled up front. This pair of star-shaped wheels clear the seed trench path of crop residues, making for more accurate placement of the seed.

It took John and Brandon a couple days to get this task accomplished.  It’s done now and ready for spring planting.   It’s great to have a warm place to work on these types of winter projects.  They did this repair work while also taking time to deliver loads of corn to GPC to fill January sales contracts.

Thanks to John for the pictures.  I must admit, I was not present when this work was taking place… the new shoulder won’t let me pull on wrenches just yet.

It’s another sunny and relatively warm January day in southwest Indiana!