Modern farmers strive to improve the management of increasing amounts of farm acres. Improving management requires farmers to be able to quickly prepare the soil for each season's farming operations. This haste has driven the need for more efficient and larger farming equipment.
Implements such as harrows, packers, or combined harrow-packers were some of the earliest implements to be made with widths exceeding sixty feet in the field operating position. As tractor horsepower has increased over time, larger tillage implements have been made available. These larger implements require a mechanism for compactly folding the implement for practical and safe transport over the highway. U.S. Pat. No. 4,821,809, patented by Summach et al., discloses a convenient mechanism for such folding.
The conventional method of folding tillage implements is by folding wing sections along forward aligned axes such that the wings are folded to a generally upright position. Double folding wing sections may have outer sections that fold inwardly and downwardly from the ends of inner wing sections in five section winged implements. In the case of these conventional wing implements, the minimum implement width that can be achieved by such folding is limited by the width of the center section. As a result, road transport may still be somewhat restricted as these implements often exceed twenty feet or more in transport width.
Road transport standards in North America are beginning to follow the standards set in Europe in which maximum road transport widths and heights for agricultural implements are being defined. Large implements that have conventional folding wing sections are not able to be folded such that they fall within width and height limits that may be generally 3 meters wide and 4 meters high. Some U.S. states have adopted transport width limits of 13.5 ft.
Forward or rear folding implements provide some relief with respect to such transport limits. However, implements must also be made to function with the accurate seeding ability that conventionally folded implements have become capable of. Although some rear or forward folding multibar tillage implements have been developed, they do not demonstrate the accurate depth control required for farming operations.
One problem is that a tillage-packer combination for drill seeding requires the gang supporting tillage elements to be maintained parallel to the ground through a range of adjustable operating levels. The drawbar disclosed in Summach '809 raises or lowers the first attached gang of elements in a rotatable manner through its field and transport ranges of motion. A level manner of height adjustment is required for tillage elements.
Another problem that must be overcome for compact folding is the avoidance of the packer elements of the second gang striking the tillage elements of the first gang when raised to the transport position. If compact folding is not required, then the downward rotation of the suspended second gang may be limited so as not to impact the elements of the first gang. But when compact folding is desired, the elements of the second gang are in direct alignment with the ground elements of the first gang so that alignment is achieved.
Therefore, a multibar implement is required for the tillage of high acre farms with both speed and efficiency.