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"Pave And Plant" Row Crop Planter
This past winter Brian Hoogestraat built an entirely new planter that rolls his fields and plants in a single pass. His “pave and plant” rig, as he calls it, creates a tabletop smooth surface for planting. The 24 planter units on 22-in. spacings mount behind the rollers.
    “I mounted an IH cyclone box on top of each roller with their drive wheels running on the rollers,” says Hoogestraat.
    Hoogestraat has been collecting parts from old planters over the years. He used the design of an 8-row IH 800 planter with its pivot transport in his frame design. In fact, his Pave and Plant works like 3 IH 800’s, two of which pivot.
    He started out by building a 3-section frame out of 7 by 7-in. square tubing salvaged from old planter frames. The frame supports both the rollers and planter units.
    “I built the rollers out of 1/2-in. thick, 24-in. dia. oil well pipe,” says Hoogestraat. “The center roller is 12 1/2 ft. long, and the two wings are each 16 ft. long.”
    He capped the rollers with 1/2-in. steel plate and mounted them in the frame with 3-in. shafts and roller bearings. The center roller is positioned to ride just behind and slightly overlap the wings.
    The planter units ride behind the rollers. When hydraulic lift is applied at the headlands, the center roller tips forward, lifting off the ground. This also raises the planter units and disengages the planter drive. If lift continues, all 3 roller sections tip forward, eventually raising the planter units into a vertical position, the rollers off the ground and the two wings onto their transport wheels. As lift continues, and the tractor moves ahead, the wings pivot behind the center unit.
    To get the extreme lift needed to raise the 3 sets of rollers and planters, Hoogestraat combined 4 hydraulic cylinders into two. He butt-welded each pair of 3-in. dia. cylinders with 20-in. strokes into one.
    “With the rams going out in either direction, I got the 40-in. strokes I needed,” says Hoogestraat.
    Folding the wings into transport position the way he did also meant that the marker arms had to be modified. They couldn’t fold into a vertical position when not in use. Plus, they had to be 20 ft. long.
    To get the extra length and reposition them for transport, Hoogestraat fabricated two-piece marker arms to fold first on themselves and then back against the side of the pave and plant. He used wing mounts from an old cultivator for the final fold.
    “It worked great this spring, and we had very few problems,” reports Hoogestraat.
    Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Brian Hoogestraat, 27515 464th Ave., Chancellor, S. Dak. 57015 (ph 605 310-0123; bhoogy@hotmail.com).



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2012 - Volume #36, Issue #4