Tractor implements

Tractor implements are used for soil cultivation. At the end of a season soil must be ploughed and tilled, then fertilized and made even. By this process you will enable humidity to get deep, destroy roots, allow fertilizer to reach deeper layers of soil and initiate microorganism's activity.

Ploughs (plows)- the first plough was invented by the american blacksmith John Deere whose name is today well known for the most popular tractor in the world. Plough is used to cultivate deep layers of soil. They can be devided into mounted, dragged ploughs and combination of these two (semi-mounted). The most important things with plough are working depth, number of coulters and type of plough.

The most usual are single-row ploughs which turn ploughed ground on one side of row (often called single-side), ploughs for deep cultivation and reversibile ploughs. Single-row ploughs are not practical when it comes to large fields. Since they throw earth just on one side, after finishing one row you will need to go all the way back on the beggining of the field and plough another row, covering the first row. Large field ploughing is much easier with reversibile plough. This implement consists of two ploughs, one above another. After finishing one row, instead of driving tractor back at the starting line you just need to reverse the implement and drive tractor in the opposite direction. Dug earth will cover previous row and make the field even. Aside of single-row, the modern plough are often multi-row types.
Ploughs for deep ploughing are used for pre-seeding soil preparation.

There are 5 main parts of a plough: mouldboard, share, landside, frog and tailpiece.

Rotary tillers- are implements powered by tractor's PTO. They are used for soil tilling. The rotor of tiller is equiped by several flanges that hold blades, tools usually in "L" shape that cultivate the soil.

Working width of tractor types of rotary tillers is usually between 90 cm and 5 m. The effectiveness of tilling is much higher with slow mowing and high speed of rotor. It must be considered that a rotary tiller has to be attached to a tractor with adequate power. Tractor with insufficient power will not be able to move the rotor of a rotary tiller in the right way. On the other side, too much power can damage gearbox. In general, 1 meter of working width needs 25-35 HP for proper function.

The most important charasteristics of rotary tillers are working width, needed power of tractor, number of tools, working depth, needed rpms of PTO and direction of PTO rotation, possibility and type of shifting.

They can be fixed or with side shifting. Shifting mechanism can be manual or hydraulic. Belt transmission, chain transmission and gear transmission are types of power transfer systems. Smaller rotary tillers are equipped by belt or chain transmission and larger tillers are better if they are equipped by gear transmission.

The direction of rotor's rotation is usually towards tractor, but it is not always the case. Some types have counter-rotation in order to cultivate tough soil. Therefore they require large power from tractor.

Since rotary tillers have transmission, gearbox is lubricated with oil and grease. You have to check their quantity according to the manuals of manufacturer.

Cultivators- are tractor implements used for deep treatment of soil that enables humidity and fertilizers to reach lower layers. Working depth is usually 30-80 cm. Due to the construction cultivators require lots of working power from tractor. Some testings point that 40 HP per working body of cutivator is required power if the working depth is 30 cm or more.

Cultivator is usually equipped with safety pin that prevents breaking of working body when it comes to a rock or other hard objects in ground. Working bodies can be in different shapes (chisel, duckfeet, triangle or conic).

Aside of mentioned implements there are combination of two or more of them. All mentioned implements are used for primary cultivation. What follows is few words about implements for secondary cultivation.

Harrows- are implements used for surface treatment in soil preparation for seeding (making the surface even, clods breaking, terrain aeration, clearing roots, seed covering etc). Types of harrows are with teeth, with rollers and rotary harrows.

Harrows with teeth are used for pre-seeding and post-seeding soil treatment, pulling roots and covering seeds and fertilizers. There are different types of teeth harrows like weeding type, net type, farm type, spring teeth type etc.

Farm harrows have straight or slightly band wedge which are, viewed from above, sorted in ''S'' or ''Z'' shape. Working depth is up to 10 cm. These are used for clog breaking and weeding. Spring teeth type harrows have good clog breaking effect thanks to vibrating springs to which teeth are attached. Springs also prevent teeth breaking. Weeding type has long interwoven teeth for pulling and clearing weeds with help of vibrating efect. Net type of harrows have teeth that float on surface and are used for bark breaking and seeds covering. Roller harrows have different working bodies like pins, teeth, stars, spirals etc. These are used for surface cultivation and are often combined with rotary harrows and ploughs.



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