Just a farmer
New Member
- Location
- North Yorkshire
Quick question to see how people clean their sprayer nozzles with the interest being towards those that have a long orifice such as the guardian air or billericay bubble jet?
Basically as a bit of background I was spraying sugar beet today with a mix of betanal, debut and ethofumesate. I had 025 flat fans in and all was spraying as it should be. No blockages, pressure where it should be for the rate and forward speed and the sprayer emptied when it should have.
Once that was completed I did a quick triple rinse with water before moving on to a small tank of glyphosate to spot spray bad patches of black grass (0.5ha). When doing this I also changed nozzle to 035 guardian airs. At the time I was using a very high water rate so I could have a low forward speed and kept my eyes outside. I did catch myself going up to 5 bar at times but given that 6km/h would put me at 3bar given the water rate I didn’t pay much attention apart from pull the stick bad.
Following that I began the process of a full wash out which for me was a triple rinse, followed by all clear, suction and in-line filters swapped to fresh ones, followed by another triple rinse to be certain. When doing this I set the speed input from gps to manual to allow me to set the rate against a fixed speed (12km) which lets the nozzles stay at whatever pressure I want them regardless of speed changes. For the GA nozzles that meant 140l/ha which would sit the wash out at 3bar...
Only it went to 3.8bar.
I fiddled about turning sections on and off to see if there was a difference (there wasn’t), I got out and checked the pressure gauge on the rear manifold to see if the cab display pressure was wrong (it wasn’t), I pulled the filters out to see if they were dirty (they weren’t), I inspected the nozzles spray patterns (all fine + they are new). I changed the rate to what should give 2 bar and also to what should give 1 bar. Both gave the correct pressure for the correct rate. Back to rate for 3 bar and it jumps up to 3.8bar. Rate for 4 bar sits at 5 bar. I also check if its the same for other nozzles (which it wasn’t) and concluded that it must be the guardian airs.
Before I pulled all 48 nozzles off the sprayer I quickly shoved in 500l of water to see if it sprayed it out over the correct area (and back on gps speed input) and it did. So I can only conclude that the inside of the nozzles are caked in something that is meaning the sprayer has to build more pressure to force liquid through. Visual inspection by blowing through 4 randomly picked nozzles and holding them up to the sun didn’t show anything out of the ordinary.
So back to the original question, anyone had a problem like this? Am I right to think the nozzle is the issue? What do you think the best way to dislodge dirt (that I can’t see) from the nozzle is.
Thanks
Basically as a bit of background I was spraying sugar beet today with a mix of betanal, debut and ethofumesate. I had 025 flat fans in and all was spraying as it should be. No blockages, pressure where it should be for the rate and forward speed and the sprayer emptied when it should have.
Once that was completed I did a quick triple rinse with water before moving on to a small tank of glyphosate to spot spray bad patches of black grass (0.5ha). When doing this I also changed nozzle to 035 guardian airs. At the time I was using a very high water rate so I could have a low forward speed and kept my eyes outside. I did catch myself going up to 5 bar at times but given that 6km/h would put me at 3bar given the water rate I didn’t pay much attention apart from pull the stick bad.
Following that I began the process of a full wash out which for me was a triple rinse, followed by all clear, suction and in-line filters swapped to fresh ones, followed by another triple rinse to be certain. When doing this I set the speed input from gps to manual to allow me to set the rate against a fixed speed (12km) which lets the nozzles stay at whatever pressure I want them regardless of speed changes. For the GA nozzles that meant 140l/ha which would sit the wash out at 3bar...
Only it went to 3.8bar.
I fiddled about turning sections on and off to see if there was a difference (there wasn’t), I got out and checked the pressure gauge on the rear manifold to see if the cab display pressure was wrong (it wasn’t), I pulled the filters out to see if they were dirty (they weren’t), I inspected the nozzles spray patterns (all fine + they are new). I changed the rate to what should give 2 bar and also to what should give 1 bar. Both gave the correct pressure for the correct rate. Back to rate for 3 bar and it jumps up to 3.8bar. Rate for 4 bar sits at 5 bar. I also check if its the same for other nozzles (which it wasn’t) and concluded that it must be the guardian airs.
Before I pulled all 48 nozzles off the sprayer I quickly shoved in 500l of water to see if it sprayed it out over the correct area (and back on gps speed input) and it did. So I can only conclude that the inside of the nozzles are caked in something that is meaning the sprayer has to build more pressure to force liquid through. Visual inspection by blowing through 4 randomly picked nozzles and holding them up to the sun didn’t show anything out of the ordinary.
So back to the original question, anyone had a problem like this? Am I right to think the nozzle is the issue? What do you think the best way to dislodge dirt (that I can’t see) from the nozzle is.
Thanks
