6m 750a changing offset

Last year we were drilling at 6m wide with zero offset. Spent a while measuring row spacing and thought this was right. First set it up in cultivated ground. To be honest didn't then pay much attention to it. Later on in the season suddenly realised that we had uneven gaps between bouts. After some measuring we put a 7cm offset and that seemed to be OK until the beans when we had to go back to zero. Overall we had some messy misses, but chalked it down to experience and vowed to avoid it next year.

This year has been far worse. Have been thinking about the issue, but obviously not often enough as we have big gaps all over the place. In some fields the gaps appear across the field as the soil type changes. The offset seems very sensitive to soil conditions, drilling depth, cultivation type etc.

Speaking to @Simon Chiles no-one else seems to have this problem and I'm not sure why we're getting it. Have checked check chains and link arm settings and they are tight and the same both sides. Our foreman says he can see the drill move across as it hits tougher bits of ground. Might be exacerbated by all the different things we've done in fields -- i.e. Terrastar once or twice, zero till, full plough based cultivation -- that is causing so much variation.

To get the spacing just right takes a lot of faffing around and wastes time. Have enquired about implement steering, but apparently it's not simple and I'm guessing will be quite expensive. Really want to carry on drilling at 6m.

Any suggestions?
 
Here's an example of it wandering up the field:
20171028_124919.jpg
 

Simon Chiles

DD Moderator
Last year we were drilling at 6m wide with zero offset. Spent a while measuring row spacing and thought this was right. First set it up in cultivated ground. To be honest didn't then pay much attention to it. Later on in the season suddenly realised that we had uneven gaps between bouts. After some measuring we put a 7cm offset and that seemed to be OK until the beans when we had to go back to zero. Overall we had some messy misses, but chalked it down to experience and vowed to avoid it next year.

This year has been far worse. Have been thinking about the issue, but obviously not often enough as we have big gaps all over the place. In some fields the gaps appear across the field as the soil type changes. The offset seems very sensitive to soil conditions, drilling depth, cultivation type etc.

Speaking to @Simon Chiles no-one else seems to have this problem and I'm not sure why we're getting it. Have checked check chains and link arm settings and they are tight and the same both sides. Our foreman says he can see the drill move across as it hits tougher bits of ground. Might be exacerbated by all the different things we've done in fields -- i.e. Terrastar once or twice, zero till, full plough based cultivation -- that is causing so much variation.

To get the spacing just right takes a lot of faffing around and wastes time. Have enquired about implement steering, but apparently it's not simple and I'm guessing will be quite expensive. Really want to carry on drilling at 6m.

Any suggestions?

Are you sure the receiver is on the centre line of the tractor? Are you certain that the drill is exactly centred on the centre line of the tractor, there is no play in the linkage and the lower link balls are spaced so that there is no movement on the pins? What type of lower link stabilisers do you have? If you’re absolutely sure of those then I would suggest that possibly the steering sensitivity might need adjusting or you haven’t set all distances of the tractor and drill positions.
 

del_boy

Member
Location
Herefordshire
I have a 6m pottinger drill and find the offset changes throughout the day depending on soil types and hopper weight. Every now and again i put my markers out just to see where i am and can usually tell if the drill is off but im running at 5.97m
 

Tractor Boy

Member
Location
Suffolk
I’ve got something odd going on with my 4m JD750. I’m on Rtx centrepoint rather than rtk. My tractor has a 5cm offset programmed in to make it drive back on exactly the same line it goes out on. However, I’ve noticed this drilling season I have a 26cm wide joint every 8m when the joints should be 16.6! The strange thing is I don’t have a narrow joint on the middle joint between these 8m bouts.
Is a 4m drill not 4m wide and the drill is pulling off one way closing the gap up but opening up wider going the other way?
Sorry @Feldspar I don’t mean to hijack your thread but am wondering if somehow we have something similar happening.
 
I’ve got something odd going on with my 4m JD750. I’m on Rtx centrepoint rather than rtk. My tractor has a 5cm offset programmed in to make it drive back on exactly the same line it goes out on. However, I’ve noticed this drilling season I have a 26cm wide joint every 8m when the joints should be 16.6! The strange thing is I don’t have a narrow joint on the middle joint between these 8m bouts.
Is a 4m drill not 4m wide and the drill is pulling off one way closing the gap up but opening up wider going the other way?
Sorry @Feldspar I don’t mean to hijack your thread but am wondering if somehow we have something similar happening.

Blocked pipe?!
 

Timbo1080

Member
BASE UK Member
Location
Somerset
We have the same problem. Simply couldn’t figure it out. We now have the drill width set to 5.9m (It doesn’t seem to let us set it any less/more than a 10cm increment). Very irritating, but at least it doesn’t look like we have a blocked coulter now. Pretty pee'd off about it to be honest. Would be very interested if you find a solution. Also Topcon, but I’m certain that this is not the problem. I believe @Clive had the same problem too?
 
We have the same problem. Simply couldn’t figure it out. We now have the drill width set to 5.9m (It doesn’t seem to let us set it any less/more than a 10cm increment). Very irritating, but at least it doesn’t look like we have a blocked coulter now. Pretty pee'd off about it to be honest. Would be very interested if you find a solution. Also Topcon, but I’m certain that this is not the problem. I believe @Clive had the same problem too?

You should be able to work out if it's a blocked coulter by counting whether you have 36 rows repeated.
 

Timbo1080

Member
BASE UK Member
Location
Somerset
Sorry, that may have been unclear. We didn’t have a blocked coulter, but the drill width/creep issue made the drilling look like we had a blocked coulter to the neighbours.......
 

Clive

Staff Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lichfield
We have the same problem. Simply couldn’t figure it out. We now have the drill width set to 5.9m (It doesn’t seem to let us set it any less/more than a 10cm increment). Very irritating, but at least it doesn’t look like we have a blocked coulter now. Pretty pee'd off about it to be honest. Would be very interested if you find a solution. Also Topcon, but I’m certain that this is not the problem. I believe @Clive had the same problem too?

No offset problem

We have drill set at 5.98m on base station RTK and it matches up very well

Very strange there is variation, only difference between my and @Feldspar set up is brand of tractor as I believe have same rtk set ups ?
 
No offset problem

We have drill set at 5.98m on base station RTK and it matches up very well

Very strange there is variation, only difference between my and @Feldspar set up is brand of tractor as I believe have same rtk set ups ?

Might be because your fields are very level and consistent density whereas we have a wide range of cultivations in different fields (from plough, Sumo Trio, Terrastar to no-till)? Running on Topcon RTK through our own mast so pretty similar there.
 

Clive

Staff Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lichfield
Might be because your fields are very level and consistent density whereas we have a wide range of cultivations in different fields (from plough, Sumo Trio, Terrastar to no-till)? Running on Topcon RTK through our own mast so pretty similar there.

maybe now more so but that wasnt always the case
 

Timbo1080

Member
BASE UK Member
Location
Somerset
Sorry
No offset problem

We have drill set at 5.98m on base station RTK and it matches up very well

Very strange there is variation, only difference between my and @Feldspar set up is brand of tractor as I believe have same rtk set ups ?

I believe we are exactly the same as your setup, including tractors, but have this problem. I’m assuming that you are able to set the width to 5.98m as you are not using the half width shut off as part of the section control, so have changed the implement width on the X30 as opposed to the iso implement width on the JD ECU?
Interestingly we seem to have the opposite issue to @Feldspar, whereby drilling shallowly shows no issues, but drilling deeper creates the issue....All undisturbed soil. Loose soil also shows the same symptom.
 

Clive

Staff Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lichfield
Sorry


I believe we are exactly the same as your setup, including tractors, but have this problem. I’m assuming that you are able to set the width to 5.98m as you are not using the half width shut off as part of the section control, so have changed the implement width on the X30 as opposed to the iso implement width on the JD ECU?
Interestingly we seem to have the opposite issue to @Feldspar, whereby drilling shallowly shows no issues, but drilling deeper creates the issue....All undisturbed soil. Loose soil also shows the same symptom.

I would have to ask the guy that drives it to answer the x30 set up questions properly, we don’t use half drill cut off though as our drill has been re plumbed front and rear so we can drill interrow companion crops with a split hopper at 2 different depths in one pass

We do use section control though so will have to ask operator I guess it’s just set as 1 section
 
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