Glacier FarmMedia – Rocks don’t change.
Farmers have been picking and dumping them ever since fields were broken.
But farms have changed. Farmers have changed. Farm machinery has changed. That means rock-pickers had to change.
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“It’s going to pick more rocks with less dump time,” said Derek Molnar of Degelman, the rock-picking giant, about the new 7800 machine. “They can go down to one tractor.”
Degelman is introducing its rock-picker now, which is designed to fill the gap between the 7200 signature series machines common on many farms and the gigantic 9600 Rock King, which is too big for many farms.
The new implement should be able to replace two or three 7200s, which farmers say they want.
“We take a lot of feedback from our customers,” said Molnar, noting customers at farm shows often complain about having to use multiple pickers to get the job done.
“We know that the products we make are the things that need to get done so that you can get to the money-making operations of either harvesting or seeding.”
That means rock pickers have to be simple and tough. Research and development isn’t based on creating complex and high-tech devices, but on creating tough implements that do more and are easy to use.
“We know guys don’t have a lot of time to mess around with our equipment, so we need to make it easy to operate, we need to make it heavy-built so they can run it fast, and they can (use it hard), and not have down time,” said Molnar, who is based in Martensville, Sask.
Company innovations are designed around dependability and simplicity, such as maintenance-free pins and colour-coded hydraulic hoses.
“We’re trying to make the experience as user-friendly as possible,” said Molnar. “We put design time into it.”
– This article was originally published at The Western Producer.
