Glacier FarmMedia – Salford has added a new model to the Halo line of high-speed disc implements it debuted in 2020, the VRT (variable-rate tillage).
This tillage tool is capable of on-the-go changes to disc angles to vary how aggressively it engages the soil. Those changes can be made multiple times in a field right from the tractor cab as soil conditions change. That variability is what really sets it apart from the other models in the Halo line.
“The VRT is different because it has adjustable gangs, which means you can adjust the machine based on where you’re using it,” says Josh Kettle, product manager for tillage at Salford Group.
Read Also
Agco settles legal dispute with TAFE
Agco and Tractors and Farm Equipment (TAFE) from India announced July 1 that they had settled their legal dispute, which began in 2024 over local ownership of the Massey Ferguson brand name and other concerns.
“If you’re on really light soil and you don’t need to put all that horsepower into running a fixed gang angle machine, you can adjust it. If you only want to do vertical tillage, you can reduce it down to two degrees. The blades, front and rear, will go down to two degrees.”
From that very shallow two-degree angle of attack, the disc blades can be turned all the way up to 15 degrees for very aggressive tillage and burying crop residue.
“It gives operators a huge range of options on how much they want to till the soil, and how much residue they want to bury and mix into the soil structure,” he adds.
Although the VRT can operate at shallow blade angles similar to a true vertical tillage implement, it has some design differences compared with Salford’s I series vertical tillage machine.
“The I series has a jackhammer effect with a spring to fracture the ground but the VRT has a rubber suspension,” says Kettle.
The disc blades on the VRT are also unique in Salford’s tillage equipment line.
“The blades on the VRT are kind of a blend between a vertical tillage wavy blade and a concave blade,” he adds. “It has a 25-wave shallow concavity on the outside rim. But on the inner section, it has slight concavity. So, it can take that lateral force.”
The VRT also has hydraulic adjustments for fore and aft levelling and down pressure for the finishing roller as well as wing down pressure.
“If you’re going through a really hilly field and you want to have more contouring, so you’re not leaving an unworked area in a little valley, you can put the wings into float and let the machine follow the contours. Once you get past that area, you can put it back into continuous flow and that puts down pressure on the wings,” Kettle says.
Switching from the float setting to a down pressure is done with an adjustable knob and gauge from inside the tractor cab. That, along with the adjustable disc angle, makes the implement highly adaptable to changing conditions across a field.
That could also help reduce fuel consumption compared with pulling a disc with fixed blade angles because the load on the tractor can be reduced when less aggressive tillage is needed. All of that means the horsepower demands it requires from a tractor are a little harder to pin down. Shallower disc angles will require less power than the most aggressive setting.
“The three-piece machines (require) five operational (hydraulic) remotes, and then one for the hydraulic jack,” says Kettle.
“If you only have five remotes, you don’t always need to have the jack connected to your tractor. We do have an option to reduce hydraulic requirements. It goes from six remotes down to three. It gives the operator a hand remote in the cab. Instead of using armrest remotes, you’d be using a joystick that comes with the machine. That option is for larger tractors that don’t always have six remotes.”
At the rear, the VRT also stands out from Salford’s other high-speed discs with a double 14-inch flat bar roller design, which is unique to the VRT. And the VRT is capable of working at up to 14 miles per hour, making it one of the fastest on the market. The forward-folding design allows for a narrow road transport width of 12 feet (3.65 metres).
This spring Salford has several Halo VRT demo machines operating in the U.S. corn belt. By May, the company expects to be ready to accept customer orders.
– This article was originally published at Grainews.
