Grange Machinery Ltd of Holderness is a company that focuses on less intensive cultivation, building implements that are designed to work within min-til or no-til systems, rather than simply follow a plough.
To date, they have stuck to cultivations, but a request from a large tillage farm in Cambridgeshire for a tine drill to help with getting beans in the ground in adverse conditions encouraged it to step out of the box and expand into crop planting.
One of the company’s customers, managing director of PX Farms, James Peck, had a problem with the big drills being too heavy in poor weather conditions.
Beans are a big seed and tend to be planted late, so meeting with less than suitable conditions for heavy machinery was a frequent occurrence.
Peck went on to note that Grange Machinery worked with his farm to build what is described as a one off 6m mounted cultivator drill which was light in weight, yet robust enough to work in a variety of soils – from heavy clay to sandy loams.
Besides its versatility, the resulting 6m tine drill is said to be able to place beans at the required depth before levelling off the soil surface, all at high work rates.
It is also claimed that it can work in less clement conditions with reduced compaction as the implement is on 900 and 1100 tyres front to back with a relatively small hopper on the front.
This initial success of the first model has led Grange Machinery to develop the design and and place the machine on the market, where it is known as the ‘TDT’.
TDT features
The TDT is supplied with a category 3 and 4 linkage headstock and uses 20mm Grange tines over four rows on the toolbar frame, at a tine spacing of 250mm centres.
A feature of the design is the use of contouring wings which have a pivot pitch of up to five deg side to side.
These are integrated into the carrying frame above each wing to allow for undulations and varying terrain, maintaining seed depth across the full width of the drill.
Managing of Grange Machinery, Ruth Jones, said:
“The TDT has been designed with trialled and tested features and the proven framework from a variety of our loosening models; combining these with our latest tine technology allows us to bring an extremely competitive tine drill to the market.”
Grange Machinery is working with Bourgault Tillage Tools (BTT) UK Ltd for the supply of coulters and will be offering the full range of the company’s tips.
The tines are followed by double rear harrow frames which are height and pitch adjustable and fitted with a Z-tine harrow system.
The drill can be specified with either one or two distribution heads for seed-only, or a grain and fertiliser combination and a front tank may also be specified.