Performance Story:
Soil drainage on the Canadian Prairies is currently done during a very tight window of time after harvest and before the ground freezes or the first snowfall. In some years, soil conditions are too wet and there is no opportunity to upgrade or maintain existing field drains.
Traditional scrapers load the soil in a hopper and once it's full, dumped on a pile in another part of the field. The farmer then has to come in the field with a tillage tool to spread and level the piles created. This project demonstrated a unique technology that can be used as an on-farm management tool.
The soil spreading scraper in this project can distribute the soil over a 30 metre wide area on either side of the unit. The soil can be distributed in crop with minimal damage. This allows the use of this tool throughout the growing season as well as when a traditional scraper can be used.
This project took a developing product concept and made it into an instrumented operating prototype, which was field tested in operating conditions to allow for power input data collection and analysis. The analyzed data was used to optimize the performance and sizing of driveline components, resulting in a simplified and more durable design. Design changes were retested before implementing into the final design and solid model drawing set. The production version of the soil spreading scraper has been designated as the Wolverine under the Dynamic Ditchers Inc. name.
The company has a website with videos of the Wolverine in use, technical information and testimonials from satisfied customers. The machine was also on display at the 2009 Manitoba Ag Days.
This piece of equipment will benefit Manitoba farmers as it will give them another option when it comes to soil drainage.
