Pronto NT

[dontknowanything]

Just spent an interesting day at a Horsch farm in Czech Republic, which was very impressive I must admit. Herr Horsch was telling me about their Pronto NT (No Till), which sounds like a pretty interesting piece of kit. Wavy front disc, double disc opener, and press at the back. Individual depth control for each coulter, nice big seed hopper on its own wheels, possibility of separate fert disc too. Currently it only comes in a 4m+ transport width, but there will be a 3m version next year.

Could be a good addition to the DD scene I think, with the caveat that I haven't seen one in the flesh.

 

[SilliamWhale]

Hmmmm.....

 

[dontknowanything]

Hmmmm.....

Sorry, I know you don't like the H word

 

[SilliamWhale]

No its not that he clearly engineers good kit, but I don't think we're going to see anything different or new.

Would you like to hear me rant about why?

 

[dontknowanything]

Go on then

 

[SilliamWhale]

Go on then

I'll save it for tomorrow! But seriously leading wavy discs and double disc openers have been around for 30 odd years.

http://www.horsch2.com/en/products/seeding-technology/disc-seed-drills/pronto-nt/

This will be dissapointing for no till on all but the very best land in my view. Why?

1. no weight for downpressure on wavy discs
2 no parallel links on double discs
3. no way of keeping the weight on the double disc - so your relying on the wavy disc to do some tillage to accomodate these failings.
4 press wheel looks just like a wheel which may or may not cover seed properly

Its a triple disc drill no wholly different to this:
http://farm.autotrader.co.uk/used-f...rhystud-ffpa-8ab1ee4f35e7d2cc013654e3bed23825

(my old one 6 years ago)

I hate to sound like a curmudgeon but this is not new stuff. I just feel its a wasted opportunity.

 

[dontknowanything]

I'll save it for tomorrow! But seriously leading wavy discs and double disc openers have been around for 30 odd years.

http://www.horsch2.com/en/products/seeding-technology/disc-seed-drills/pronto-nt/

This will be dissapointing for no till on all but the very best land in my view. Why?

1. no weight for downpressure on wavy discs
2 no parallel links on double discs
3. no way of keeping the weight on the double disc - so your relying on the wavy disc to do some tillage to accomodate these failings.
4 press wheel looks just like a wheel which may or may not cover seed properly

Its a triple disc drill no wholly different to this:
http://farm.autotrader.co.uk/used-f...rhystud-ffpa-8ab1ee4f35e7d2cc013654e3bed23825

(my old one 6 years ago)

I hate to sound like a curmudgeon but this is not new stuff. I just feel its a wasted opportunity.

OK so it's not new tech, does that mean it is no good? Is a single disc drill new tech?

1 - looks to me like the wavy discs have all the weight of the frame on them
2 - true, but less of an issue with a disc than a tine?
3 - says it has adjustable pressure up to 120kg on the double disc
4 - indeed

 

[SilliamWhale]

OK so it's not new tech, does that mean it is no good? Is a single disc drill new tech?

1 - looks to me like the wavy discs have all the weight of the frame on them
2 - true, but less of an issue with a disc than a tine?
3 - says it has adjustable pressure up to 120kg on the double disc
4 - indeed

It will be a disappointment on all but the best soils in my view. It is probably a tool where you may need to say "oh lets do a little bit of tillage to get it working better" given the potential negatives I pointed out.

My responses:

1. Yes. Which may not be a lot/enough in certain circumstances. I'm not sure whats keeping those wavy discs in the ground either - is it a ram coming off a main frame?

2. I think it follows ground contours better and reduces skips. It cannot maintain downpressure very well and stops keeping the blade at the necessary angle
3. Ok. But it may need ballast to retain this.

For me this design is style over substance.

I don't know much, but I definitely know that with No Till its the little details with drills and seeders that enable them to function consistently well.

 

[dontknowanything]

Fair enough, I'm sure you are correct. I would agree that it doesn't look like the mechanism for giving down pressure on the coulters is very substantial. You may be interested to know that Horsh use a 750a on some of their trial plots, which he tells me is a good drill.

 

[benferg]

The Best thing I can think of about a drill like this is that a bit of cultivation along the seed strip might warm the soil by getting more air in. Other than that I don't like triple disc drills.

Closer row spacing would be good.

No good at oversowing, as the front disc would rip up a lot of the existing cover.

 

[SilliamWhale]

I think European available triple discs now would be Kuhn, Great Plains and the Horsch one. Not sure any others have them.

A little bit of cultivation might do a job now and again but its mainly because the coulter design is a hangover from tillage design that the wavy disc is needed. The Bertini triple disc has more features that help to negate the bad points about triple discs but I don't know how the guys using them are getting on at the moment?

Semeato make a nice offset double disc.

 

[dontknowanything]

huh, well that's my parade rained on. Shame, I thought with a nice big seed tank and ability to put fert down too it could be good. Wide too

Time for the rant now please Will.

 

[York]

Just spent an interesting day at a Horsch farm in Czech Republic, which was very impressive I must admit. Herr Horsch was telling me about their Pronto NT (No Till), which sounds like a pretty interesting piece of kit. Wavy front disc, double disc opener, and press at the back. Individual depth control for each coulter, nice big seed hopper on its own wheels, possibility of separate fert disc too. Currently it only comes in a 4m+ transport width, but there will be a 3m version next year.

Could be a good addition to the DD scene I think, with the caveat that I haven't seen one in the flesh.

just look at the specs of the drill:
120 kg max. down pressure on the seeding coulters
250 kg max on the fertiliser coulter.
I don't know why people see there innovation.
Look, when M.H. came with the Corn planter, actually they only build the frame and got the US row units, the whole machine was labelled as "Big innovation". Yes, it was indeed. The red paint made the costing of the machine 50% more costly than a US equivalent.
If you are going down this route go the Simba / GP and you have even the benefit for some "British Build".
York-Th.

 

[Clive]

120kg per coulter is useless for a direct drill

 

[dontknowanything]

120kg per coulter is useless for a direct drill

alright, I get the picture

what does the 750a have, 200kg?

 

[Clive]

alright, I get the picture

what does the 750a have, 200kg?

250 I think - you can add tractor weight blocks as well to get another 2t on the drill

 

[dontknowanything]

250 I think - you can add tractor weight blocks as well to get another 2t on the drill

Looking at the spec sheet for the 6m, it would be 216kg per coulter fully ballasted, assuming you could get 100% of the weight transferred. So probably would be 200 in the real world, still 80% more than the horsch though.

 

[Clive]

Looking at the spec sheet for the 6m, it would be 216kg per coulter fully ballasted, assuming you could get 100% of the weight transferred. So probably would be 200 in the real world, still 80% more than the horsch though.

IIRC the 4m is more than the 6m / coulter as less coulters to spread similar hopper and frame weight over

I think this is why the 4m is favoured over the 6m by many users

 

[Kaad]

We have drilled with a Pronto DC (the classical one) for 7 years and it needs a cultivated soil to do a good job! The press wheels don't close the rows after the discs probably.. We now use it to redrill spring barley directly in our poor WW field and I see that it need some loose soils to do a proper work. It's a good drill for what it's made for, but I would never go for the Horsch type of discs for direct drilling - they need tilth!!!

 

[dontknowanything]

IIRC the 4m is more than the 6m / coulter as less coulters to spread similar hopper and frame weight over

I think this is why the 4m is favoured over the 6m by many users

4m is theoretically 250kg