Simba free-flow direct drill

[farmerman]

Evening

so I purchased a 4m freeflow of a fellow forum member (Blair) @B R C

I wanted to dip my toe into direct drilling with out spending a fortune and I’m fairly handy with spanners so thought I could perhaps achieve something in the workshop.

afters lots of research I decided to build my own mounting brackets which are fully moveable on the drill frame.

Again plenty of research and have gone with the vos double openers where the way to go. (Set at 260mm centres)

the drill is nearing completion and is more or less ready for a filed trial.

Will update in more detail if people are interested, my budget was £5000 it came all in at £4400 Including drill purchase and the vos openers and adaptors plates.
Miles

 

[Warp Land Farmer]

When you say mounting bracket do you mean a replacement for the Freeflow tine?

 

[ih1455xl]

That’s awesome I think you’d be able to sell a fair few sets of them

 

[farmerman]

First job get drill home and wash off etc get all the original front tines off drilling tines and
Old pipes that were cracked etc so basically down to just frame

 

[alomy75]

Nice late Freeflow there; wire scrapers and enclosed fan please keep the updates coming; any photos/drawings of the new coulters/legs/brackets?

 

[Fendt820]

used to run a free flow. Awesome drill. I drilled some grass in the grass without any mods worked very well. Fantastic drill and very cheap to run

 

[farmerman]

Next job was to do some serious homework tinkering then thinking then more tinkering until we came up with a solution we was fairly happy with to fasten the legs to a bracket that we was happy with and also what could move spaceing a if so wished. Photos below are the prototype brackets that we first made out of wood then had one set cut at the laser shop to make sure we was happy

 

[case44]

Definitely interested to see how it goes,I have a 3m Freeflow and have just priced up some Metcalfe tines to try some reduced toll or direct drilling but your idea with 250mom spacing sounds attractive.
Keep posting the pictures.

 

[farmerman]

Do

Definitely interested to see how it goes,I have a 3m Freeflow and have just priced up some Metcalfe tines to try some reduced toll or direct drilling but your idea with 250mom spacing sounds attractive.
Keep posting the pictures.

the main reason we have gone to 260mm becos it makes the most use of the frame ie you can go rite to the edge and get the full4m working width instead of say 3.8metres but as we have made them to move along the frame we could in theory go to 300mm or reduce it down to 200mm it’s very versatile

 

[case44]

What legs are you planning to use?
If you don’t mind me asking.

 

[farmerman]

After getting bracket back was fairly happy and not a lot had to be changed except for a few wholes that wasn’t needed being took out and one whole few mm bigger prototype going back with bits not needed

 

[farmerman]

The whole base of what this drill was based on was a sprinter type set up that gave us the base and a great starting point.. concept design of whole leg brackets and vos opener on minus the nice radiuses etc

 

[farmerman]

Why the brackets were being laser cut we had to start thinking of what leg to use to mount the vos opener too. We was going down route to have some more laser cut out but had to buy metal in then cost of laser cutting. but the whole point of doing this drill was to see how cheaply we could make a no till drill for so had the idea of re useing the freeflow front leading legs same on a cultipress to be the leg of choice worked out to be great once we cut them too size we wanted etc(they are bloody tough and used some grinding discs) I don’t think you could of designed anything much better without spending a fortune

 

[farmerman]

When you say mounting bracket do you mean a replacement for the Freeflow tine?

Yes they are useless for what we wanted so replaced them

 

[farmerman]

What legs are you planning to use?
If you don’t mind me asking.

We used the freeflows front leading legs. Turned out to be very easy to do and a great simple choice to use

 

[farmerman]

Car full of laser cut bits for drill minus a fair few shillings also including some digger bucket brackets just to add to the workload lol

 

[farmerman]

We wanted the vos opener directly in the middle of the leg not just welded to the side so we could get the spaceing spot on thus welding two brackets on the side of the leg that the vos bolts too

 

[farmerman]

This box also arrived the most expensive part of the process but we felt the vos opener was the only choice and after doing a lot of research on tff seems to be very good Stuart from Marin Lishman was also great and a big help throughout the various stages of getting the drill together

 

[farmerman]

one of the next jobs was to get everything sprayed ready to be mounted to the drill. We couldn’t get a very good match on paint to the drill to match up but the closest we could get to is the yellow you see later down the line when drill is proven to work well we might re spray them to a better matching colour to drill. P.s ignore straw in spray booth shed has to be drafted in as emergency calving shed when times call

 

[farmerman]

After spraying up all brackets legs etc we then had to start assembling everything ready to mount them to drill frame we put spacers in the middle of both brackets so the leg is free to move and break back if hits a stone etc hopeing that we save the vos point we found the easiest way and cheapest was to copy the layout of the front tines on freeflow and how they break back these are pictures of some bolts we used as a shear pin