Agross considering buying a new seed drill for several years, the requirements have been steadily increasing. In the end, the Farmet Falcon PRO modular seed drill, which offers quick-change working sections, proved to be the optimal solution. Exchangeable are both the front pre-processing and fertilization section and the rear sowing section. Farmet offers a completely new section control element for switching each individual sowing coulter, thanks to which the seed drill offers a wide range of setting options and structures for future growth. From the optional row spacing of 12.5 cm or 15 cm, they chose the larger one at Agross.
Agross own powerful tractors, that is why the choice was 8 meters of working width. With this working width Farmet offers, on request, an enlarged hopper with a total volume of 8,500 l divided by 40:60 chambers for fertilizer and seeds. Such a large volume hopper is possible thanks to the high load capacity of the extra-large pneumatic wheels roller, which the Falcon PRO uses as standard. The seed chamber is further divided by a partition into left and right halves, each with its own metering unit. The entire pneumatic sowing system is pressurized, so it provides high performance even at higher working speeds and large doses of both fertilizers and seeds. Agross choose this enlarged hopper to increase seasonal performance.
The new section control controlling each individual sowing coulter has several functions. On one hand, it is switching on and off the sowing of the individual coulters on headlands and when planting wedges. Here the system cooperates with the navigation tractor and creates virtual headlands. Thanks to this, we can sow the headland to the end and the plant stands are homogeneous over the entire field area. Other features are automatic tramline calculation. This function is also controlled by GPS navigation and allows the tramlines to be changed completely automatically, even if the sprayer reach is not a multiple of the seed drills. The tramlines can always form different seed coulters, as is the case with a given GPS position. The third function section controls is the permanent closing of the coulters when sowing in wider rows by both metering units (even and odd coulters) with a spacing of 37.5 and 45 cm.
Each seed metering unit is connected to one distributor head, from where the sowing tubes lead through the sowing sensors to the individual seed coulters. Even seed coulters are connected to the left metering unit and odd seed coulters to the right metering unit. This connection allows dual use when establishing vegetation. First is to set two crops with even and odd shoes. For each half of the seed installation, the seed of another crop is filled and one crop is sown with even coulters and the other crop is sown with odd coulters. In addition, different working depths can be set for odd shoes, so you can set two crops to different depths. In this way, it is possible to set, for example, cereals with legumes or clover with grasses or other combinations. Another option is set only with even seed coulters, where the resulting row width is twice the basic row of the seed drill. In the case of Agross, therefore, 30 cm. Make such wide rows is very convenient to sow mainly rape. The rear sections of the Falcon seed drills can be prepared to be moved by half the row spacing to the left, so that when positioned with even coulters, the position of the rows is symmetrical with respect to the center machines. This can be combined with Falcon machines with a front chisel section for strip tillage and fertilizer storage.
The large working width of the machine, the high working speed and the large volume hopper guarantee the high productivity of the seed drill. Thanks to complex electronic control and management system, the operator always has immediate information and all non-standard situations are immediately signaled. The seed drill is equipped with the reliable German electronic system Müller Eleketronik, which fully supports ISObus. At Agross, the electronic system has seed drills connected via ISObus to the Topcon display panel of the tractor navigation, from where some operating data such as GPS positions for controlling the control section are also available. The entire control is clear and requires a high level of high quality work quality.
