Hillhater said:
It appears that much of this is already being developed..
https://www.farmweekly.com.au/story/6217775/john-deere-trials-electric-tractor/
Interesting Image.
I like the crane they use to handle the cable - looks like a standard piece of equipment, no need to reinvent the wheel.
I also like the reeler. Hope they did not reinvent this one.
A bit large for my taste, but I'd like to get such a thing.
Where may I look?
Crane constructors?
Marine equipment?
Winches?
But this tractor is also a nice starting point to contrast.
Nice example of half way innovations, I'd say.
Remembers me to the factory design of the early 20th century.
Then they repalced the steam engine by an electric motor - yes, singular:
one central single huge motor for a whole factory, driving the transmission shafts and belts running through all the shop floors.
It took nearly a century to split this motor to dozens, hundreds, if not thousands of small ones placed right where power is needed, with solid state controllers delivering precise speed, torque and even position.
Today a simple AC inductor doesn't cost much more than a bare shaft, the bearings and supports its going to replace.
You don't see it in the picture, but I wouldn't be surprised if the rotary harrow were joned by a classic cardan PTO shaft to the tractor.
But it looks quite wide, and I see a folding cylinder.
So presumably its a 2-pieced one, with one angle gear in the middle, two cardan shafts going to each side and another angle gear on each side to go to vertical rotation again.
So 3 cardan shafts and 3 angle gears to get power from the central motor to the tine gears.
Doesn't this resemble the shaft-belt-transmission systems of 1900's shop floor?
People around here like rotary harrows.
They deliver excellent levelling of the field.
What to level? - Well - mostly the tracks of the heavy tractor carrying the shitty piece :lol:
So the rotary harrow is a perfect solution for the problem it generates itself :lol: :lol:
If I made an electric rotary harrow, this would look quite different.
Most people run it with a roller in the front to crush clumps of soil, and usually it has attached another kind of roller after it for depth control, and to recompact the overtilled soil.
So if I wanted this effect, I'd attach two arrays of rubber wheels of full working with each to the harrow and leave the tractor away.
So its self propelled, self carrying.
Motors for propulsion are attached right to the rollers, motors for the tines right to the tine gear.
Maybe we have a modular control unit with battery, cable reel, drivers seat, power conversion, control systems in some kind of container that we can shift with a crane or fork lift from one unit to the other.
But thats much less than a ton (w/o cable and batteries), not 10 tons like the monster of tractor in the deere image.
And if we can run it autonomously, we can downsize it from lets say 6 m to 2 m.
..
