Robotic milking

Hanspree

Member
Location
Lancashire
Got an Atlas SF4 compressor running 3 vms, done 23000hrs n sounds like scroll is on its way out and at £6500 to fix and at 8 year old machine doesn't stack up.
What do other people use and do is have to be oil free for the robots??
 

Fossi

Member
Location
Finland
Got an Atlas SF4 compressor running 3 vms, done 23000hrs n sounds like scroll is on its way out and at £6500 to fix and at 8 year old machine doesn't stack up.
What do other people use and do is have to be oil free for the robots??
A few farms near me, have put in kaeser compressors when their SF4 have given Up. Min oilfree compressors, but added a couple extra filters to remove potential oil.
 

Chippy

Member
Location
Cumbria
Got an Atlas SF4 compressor running 3 vms, done 23000hrs n sounds like scroll is on its way out and at £6500 to fix and at 8 year old machine doesn't stack up.
What do other people use and do is have to be oil free for the robots??

I would say £6500 would more than buy a new compressor because when I replaced the scroll on mine for around £1500 I also got the GX4 which is a screw compressor. The 2 run together to run 4 robots. The GX4 wasn’t even £6500 either.
 

Hanspree

Member
Location
Lancashire
I would say £6500 would more than buy a new compressor because when I replaced the scroll on mine for around £1500 I also got the GX4 which is a screw compressor. The 2 run together to run 4 robots. The GX4 wasn’t even £6500 either.
That's what I thought, oil free compressors bloody expensive, the firm dealing with said they had some GX4 with all the filters on working on lely farms and working well.
Has the GX4 got a drier? Have you had any problems with oil getting in the line?
 

Chippy

Member
Location
Cumbria
Yes has a drier I think but then we put SF4 and GX4 through a descant drier to get dew point down low enough. No problems with GX4 so far and it’s done 14000 hours and old SF4 going well still helping GX4 out. SF goes from 6-8 bar and GX goes from 8-10 bar I think.
 

richy

Member
What are people's thoughts on the guided v free traffic systems. I know it's been covered before, but having seen many different farms I can see the benifts /downsides to both.
Final stages of planning for 4 bots in green field with access to grazing on 1 side. 2 groups with 4 rows of cubicles feed on the outside.
All thoughts /advice greatly appreciated.
 

Spear

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
North Devon
Setup needs to be better with free access.
Free access cheaper to install but higher concentrate costs.
More to go wrong with guided system but much easier to pick and handle cows
 

richy

Member
Setup needs to be better with free access.
Free access cheaper to install but higher concentrate costs.
More to go wrong with guided system but much easier to pick and handle cows
It seems to me that a guided system would be more efficient from a labour point of view, however it seems to be harder on cows feet and more bullying may occur.
Guided seems to be easier to train heifers and the robot should have more free time.
 

Fossi

Member
Location
Finland
Have anyone of you heard of 4Dbarn and Mr Jouni Pitkäranta? He is a Architect from Finland, who designs barns.


www.cowhomes.com
(11min presentation of 4Dbarn)

He has written articles about His designs in various international magazines.

Free systems with swing gates so You can manage every thing yourself, there should not be a single daily routine in the barn that you need to wait for someone to give You a hand.

Any thoughts?
 

Hanspree

Member
Location
Lancashire
Had couple quotes for compressors, Atlas only 12 months warranty but could be 8 week delivery. Anybody know anything about Fleming compressors? bit more expensive than atlas better warranty and delivery 4 weeks.
 

pine_guy

Member
Location
North Cumbria
It seems to me that a guided system would be more efficient from a labour point of view, however it seems to be harder on cows feet and more bullying may occur.
Guided seems to be easier to train heifers and the robot should have more free time.
Neighbour changes the time he feeds out at or the cows all gather up at feeding time to go through instead of a steady stream.
 

Spear

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
North Devon
Could someone help me out with a simple question. Anyone with a Sf4 compressor with fridge drier.....does your fan blow away from the motor towards the compressor or suck towards fan motor. Replaced my fan unit assembly yesterday and I’m sure it’s now going the wrong way.
Think I need another fan
 

pine_guy

Member
Location
North Cumbria
if its 3 phase just change any of the 2 live wires and that will change the fan direction
Will also reverse the direction of the motor. Not sure what it is connected to? @Spear

The cooling fans on induction motors are normally radial and it’s the cover that directs the air over the motor to cool.
Or is the fan you talking about connected to creating the compressed air?
 

Spear

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
North Devon
It’s the drier’s fan. I’m sure it’s supposed to blow air away from it’s motor through the condenser fins towards the air intake for main compressor. But this motor sucks.
Reversing the wires is an option but it may result in fan unscrewing overtime.
 

AlexBY

Member
Has anyone had any experience or is it even possible to replace collars (qwes?) on lely a4 to a Eid eartag reader and stand alone heat such as cow manager? 6 years on and out of warranrty and quite a few of mine are starting to fail. They seem to lose heat detection first and eventually Id... just thinking thought options before I ask lely for a price!

We have solved this problem on our farm in the following way - we have just developed our responders compatible with the robot. The responder is a regular radio frequency tag uhf range. Communication with the robot is done through a special adapter connected to the Lely antenna via can bus
The device is located next to the native responder receiver. I think? there won’t be any problems installing the responder on a cow’s leg where the responders are usually worn in your area .
Of course, there is no heat detection in these tags, I use them only to identify cows, as buying new Lely infrared respondents is too expensive. But on the other hand, there is nothing stopping me from buying a definition of any third party cow heat detection.

I’m attaching some demo pictures for demonstration purposes.

So far, I have tested the development on my farm and would like to try selling it. I would love to see any cooperation.
IMG_20190320_145237.jpg IMG_20190516_193129.jpg IMG_20190517_153108.jpg IMG_20190531_144948.jpg IMG_20190205_151724_HDR.jpg
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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    Votes: 79 42.0%
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    Votes: 30 16.0%
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    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 7 3.7%

Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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