Transporter potato digger
Another modification is a conveyor potato digger. The conveyor unit is installed on medium and heavy tillers. Its characteristics are similar to a vibration device. The difference lies in the fact that the potatoes are moved and cleared of adhering soil along the conveyor belt, and are not collected on a vibrating table. This type of digger is more practical than a vibratory digger, but its use is advisable only for heavy soils.
The conveyor belt is often made from rods. But steel mesh is also applicable, there are models with a rubber band on a fabric backing. The movement of the conveyor is carried out when the torque is transmitted from the tiller shaft through a gearbox, chains, gear drives.
The transporter potato digger does not damage tubers, is easy to operate, and is aggregated with powerful tillers and mini tractors. Industrial designs have the following technical characteristics:
- overall dimensions. 1140x740x47 mm;
- weight. 36 kg;
- speed. 2 km / h;
- digging depth. 20 cm;
- coverage. 53 cm.
Independent production of a conveyor potato digger after studying the schemes of the operation of factory machines is possible if the master has experience in carrying out such work. Each craftsman can show his engineering ingenuity and add his own elements to the design solution in order to improve the finished product. The general assembly instruction looks like this:
- welding of a frame of a steel square profile and corners;
- making a plowshare knife from thick sheet steel;
- installation of conveyor belt shafts;
- assembly of the conveyor belt;
- installation of brackets and mounts for the gearbox and gear transmission;
- installation of a conveyor belt and mechanisms;
- installation of a share.
Production of a screen-type digger
Competently and in detail drawn up drawings of a potato digger will allow homemade products to be easily aggregated with tillers Neva, MTZ, etc.
Step by step, the roaring potato digger is assembled as follows:
- Frame manufacturing. Profile pipe 40×40 is sawn into sections 1200 (2 pcs.) And 800 mm (2 pcs.). The parts are welded very carefully. You should get a rectangle.
- Jumpers for installing vertical adjusting rods. Fastened to a quarter of the frame length.
- Elements (150 mm long) for fastening the wheels are attached at the other end.
- Vertical racks. Having retreated 5 cm from the edge, 2 square elements (50×50 and 30×30 cm) are attached from the side of the jumpers. Then, having measured 40 cm, the profile is welded. Racks connect.
- Ral making. The blades are cut out according to the drawing and cut out of metal 0.3 mm thick. Plow is welded from 2 received parts.
- Lattice design. 1.2 m lengths are cut from the rods of 10 mm reinforcement, welded in 5 cm increments.
- The finished structure is equipped with wheels.
As a sample, before making a mechanism in a home workshop, you can familiarize yourself with models produced at agricultural machinery factories. For example, the modular potato digger of the KVM-3 screening type is equipped with a static knife and an ejector table moving along an elliptical trajectory.
The Poltavchanka screening digger has a small size and can work with any tillers; the package contains a pin and a belt. The roller adapter allows the unit to be mounted on a tiller with a rear PTO. The pulley is installed on the left and right sides, and all working elements are moved.
The simplest DIY potato digger for a tiller
Even the simplest hand-made digger will make it easier to harvest potatoes with a tiller. The advantages of homemade products are obvious:
- no significant financial investments are required;
- when manufacturing, the farmer will take into account the characteristics of the soil of his own plot and the tiller itself, to which the equipment will be attached;
- maintenance and repairs do not require the services of a professional workshop.
The passive-type arrow potato digger is the simplest hinged mechanism, made like a bayonet shovel from a curved sheet of iron and rods welded in a fan to sift out the earth.
Such a modernized digger does not require the development of a detailed drawing and will cope with the collection of root crops in an area with light soil. Even a novice home craftsman can make it.
Conveyor digger for heavy traction devices
For agricultural machinery of a heavy class, appropriate attachments are also required, because the work is carried out on large areas. This means that labor should be mechanized as much as possible. So, a conveyor digger is the most complex potato digger in design, having the largest number of rotating elements.
The crop harvested by such an aggregate is almost ready for laying in storage (tubers are whole and clean). High productivity is ensured due to the fact that the attachments for tractors provide for two-row processing, and not for 1 row, which is provided by working with a tiller.
It is extremely difficult to make such a universal conveyor yourself. Factory models are expensive, but large farms can purchase off-the-shelf designs. For example, for high-quality and fast harvesting using a mini-tractor, mounted double-row potato diggers DTZ-2V or DK-2T are designed.
How to dig potatoes with a tiller
When choosing a tiller for a personal subsidiary farm, preference should be given to those models that are designed for operation with additional equipment of different types. And the trailed units themselves (plow, hiller, potato digger, mower) can be made in a home workshop.
Harvesting potatoes with a tiller is carried out not only on large areas, a mechanized assistant will also be in demand at the summer cottage. You just need to equip it with attachments (purchased or made yourself). The principle of operation for all units is similar. The ploughshare plunges into the garden bed, raises the layer of earth along with the roots, leaving them on the surface. A person can only collect the uprooted potatoes in bags.
When choosing a tiller, the power of the unit and the type of soil on which it will be applied are taken into account. With the help of an average power tiller, you can harvest 20 acres of land in an hour. For harvesting from a large potato plot, a tiller with a capacity of more than 5 liters is suitable. with., for smaller sections, you can choose a lighter unit with less power.
In addition, weeding of potatoes with a tiller and hilling can be mechanized.
Design features and types
Before you make a potato digger for a tiller with your own hands, you need to study the device, design features and prepare the tools and materials necessary for work. The principle of operation for all models is the same: the teeth of the mechanism pierce the ground and rake out the earthen lump along with the root crops. In this case, the crop can be collected in a bunker or remain in the garden. It will depend on the constructive solution of the model. Potato diggers are:
- fan (lancet);
- vibrating (roaring);
- conveyor.
Experienced craftsmen show their engineering ingenuity and independently create multifunctional units that are used for planting root crops, and for hilling, and for harvesting.
Digger Wheels
The structure is equipped with movable wheels. When making a digger in a home workshop, they can be borrowed from an old garden wheelbarrow. Wide tires make it easier to move around the beds. The best option is those equipped with an axle. Racks are attached to the axis, in which locking holes are made.
Alternatively, you can use metal. They will make the structure heavier, which will improve the performance of the rally on hard soils. Rubber ones will move worse on wet ground, rubber ones will show themselves better in such a situation, but with a tractor tread.
Materials and solutions for insoles
The arrow (fan) homemade potato digger for the tiller is made according to the drawings. The basis of such a digger is a frame, the details of which are carefully calculated and welded. All measurements and parameters of each part of the suspension part, wheels and stars, traction are entered into the drawing. A master with experience with power tools and complex equipment will be able to do this. For the manufacture of parts you will need:
- welding machine, drill, angle grinder;
- hardware, wrenches, drills;
- hammer;
- scissors for metal.
Experts recommend using in work:
- Steel sheets not thinner than 7 mm. Plates are needed for making a share. Often, for this purpose, they take a used circular saw blade.
- Channel No. 8, square section profile pipe for uprights.
- Corners 63×40 mm for the frame.
- For rods of a pitched board, fittings no thicker than 10 mm are suitable. Steel strips will do.
- The vibrator drive is made of a pipe and an eccentric. The pulley is driven by a belt drive.
Drum potato diggers
This is a rather rare version of equipment for mini-equipment, therefore, it is mostly homemade. Cleaning potatoes from soil in such devices is quite high quality, as well as laying it on the ground, but the design itself is quite controversial, and the tubers are more damaged than when digging with the above potato diggers, and therefore they are worse preserved.
What is simpler in them is a direct rotation drive from the power take-off shaft. Everything else. making the drum, thrust rollers and bearings. is clearly more difficult. The design of the knife does not have any special features, except that it is preferable for it to have a more rounded shape in the back, so that the potatoes are not additionally damaged when they enter the drum.
Potato diggers with a rumble
This is the most common type of potato diggers produced by various machine-building plants in Russia and abroad. It has slight design differences, primarily in the design of the screen grate drive. the pallet oscillates during operation, which allows the potatoes to be partially cleared of the ground during the movement of the potato digger.
The knife of such a digger can have different configurations. It can be fixed motionless, or it can be hinged and fluctuate slightly during movement, simplifying the process of digging out tubers. Knife width is 35. 40 cm.
Potato digger for tiller, types of structures, drawings for making by hand
The main part of the garden areas of Russians is traditionally allotted for potatoes, because among our people it is also called the second loaf. Many have shifted part of the work of growing potatoes onto their shoulders, or rather onto trailed equipment for small mechanization: tillers and mini tractors.
And if planting potatoes is not a lot of work, then hilling, and most importantly, digging up is not an easy task. For hilling and weeding, the hiller supplied with the tillers is most often used, but for digging in its pure form it is not quite suitable. We will figure out what to dig and how to make a potato digger for a tiller with our own hands.
Several designs of potato diggers for tillers and mini tractors are known. Let’s consider them: from the simplest to high-tech.
DIY drawings
It is this type of potato digger, despite the sufficient difficulty in manufacturing, is made by home craftsmen with their own hands more often than others. We offer rough drawings with the main dimensions of such a potato digger for a tiller.
A large number of joints of moving parts makes this device regularly serviced, but the result of its work is better than that of fan potato diggers:
Potatoes are better cleaned from the ground and located on its surface.
The magnitude and frequency of vibrations of the screen can be different and depends on the design of the drive, but even with minor vibrations, the cleaning proceeds quite well:
Transporter potato diggers
They are much easier to make on their own, but in our opinion they peel potatoes from the ground just as well.
Their knives are the same as those of the screening ones, and the potatoes are peeled while moving along the conveyor belt. It is clear that the longer it is, the better the potatoes will peel, but long conveyor belts can only be placed on potato diggers used with tractors. On tillers, they will interfere with the person following him.
The conveyor belt drive can be different. If it is taken from the wheels of the digger itself, then they should be with good lugs so that they do not get stuck on wet or very loose ground.
Interesting in this design and rear guides, more compactly stacking potatoes behind the belt.
In this do-it-yourself conveyor potato picker, the tape drive is carried out from the power take-off shaft of a homemade tiller and is transmitted by a motorcycle chain.
To view a picture, click on its thumbnail to the right
In the manufacture of this type of potato digger, the main problem will be the selection of the speed of rotation of the drive gear of the conveyor and its coordination with the revolutions of the power take-off shaft. In this model, the power take-off shaft rotates at a speed of 500. 800 rpm, and the gearbox is taken from a motor boat with a gear ratio of approximately 1: 2. The rest is matched by the size of the stars for an approximate walking speed when digging 2-3 km / h.
And yet, the connection between the speed of the conveyor belt and the wheel speed seems to us to be more expedient.
There are models designed for specific tillers and mini tractors, like this one for mechanisms with a side PTO:
Fan potato diggers
The easiest to manufacture, also produced industrially, but most of them require some modifications.
It is immediately clear that they are based on the same hiller, it is he, buried below the level of occurrence of tubers, loosens and unfolds the soil. And here he brings up the dug potatoes. a fan welded to the back of the hiller. Its role is played by metal rods welded at a distance of 3-4 cm from each other, diverging and curved at the top.
The depth of penetration is regulated by thrust wheels, and the transverse bar serves as a support for the legs, standing on which a person, with his own weight, provides the required penetration to the device.
It is this scheme of the fan potato digger that seems to us the most productive. The digging process itself can be seen here:
The following is an exemplary drawing of such a potato digger, containing the main parameters for manufacturing.
You will have to modify the shape, angle of attack and other nuances yourself, taking into account your soil, power and driving characteristics of the tiller on which you plan to install the potato digger, and even potato varieties that form tubers at different depths.
A variety of such a digger without a fan, designed for two people:
Equestrian potato digger
There are still quite a few of them on sale on the Internet. They are imported mainly from Poland and are converted into mini tractors and tillery.
At the same time, given the higher speed of movement of this technique in comparison with the horse, in addition to reworking the trailed device, a limiter-shield is placed on it from the side onto which the dug potatoes are thrown. Otherwise, it will have to be collected in neighboring areas. A wedge-shaped paw digs in the potatoes, as in fan diggers, and the drive of the device that removes the tubers from the ground is carried out from wheels with lugs. The higher the travel speed, the faster this potato remover rotates.
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Fan
The fan digger is attached to the unit (it is also called the “arrow” and “foot”). In the professional language, such a unit is called “dolphin”, due to the corresponding shape of the plow. a plowshare. The device of this unit is not complicated, while it has quite good performance. You can make such a unit with your own hands in a short period of time.
Principle of operation: the cutter opens the earthen layer, the roots roll onto the reinforcement, move along it. During this “journey”, the tubers are cleared of soil. Before the start of harvesting, all vegetation must be removed without fail. To make such a structure, you will need the following tools and materials:
- turbine;
- welder;
- drill;
- hammer;
- set of drills;
- roulette;
- marker;
- bolts;
- nippers or pliers;
- steel sheet 3 mm thick. it is necessary to make a ploughshare from it;
- bolts (10 mm);
- rectangular profile;
- steel sheet to create a rack;
- bracket;
- reinforcement (10 mm).
There are times when the reinforcement is bent in the form of steps. A holder-stand is attached to the share itself, the height of which depends on the tiller‘s design. The holder stand can be welded to the plow itself, without bolting.
Among the shortcomings, we can mention a relatively narrow strip of cultivated land. it is only 30 cm.
Using such a structure, you can lose a significant part of the crop. up to 22%. Also, some of the tubers are damaged. this will lead to the fact that such a product cannot be left for winter storage.
Conveyor
Self-made conveyor potato digger can be of different sizes. These units are usually large in size to handle large areas of cultivation. To work on a personal plot, there are enough small potato diggers, which it is not very difficult to do with your own hands. The principle of operation is simple: the tubers are removed from the soil and fed to the separator via a conveyor belt.
The tape itself is a grid, which is made of reinforcement welded in parallel. It is attached to a movable conveyor belt. Also, the tape is made of mesh and rubber, which is attached to dense fabric. The soil adhering to the tubers, separating, falls, and the potatoes enter the storage.
The conveyor moves as a result of the rotation of the shaft, which is attached to the tiller.
In this case, the following elements are used:
- reducer;
- chain;
- gears.
The cutter is a crescent-shaped metal tool. It sinks into the ground by almost 20 cm. Such a device works much “cleaner”, the unharvested crop remains in the fields no more than 5%. The cutter is fastened using bolts with lock washers.
Before you start making a potato digger, you need to think about the question of whether you have practical skills. You should also carefully read the drawings. there are a huge number of them on the Internet.
The main elements of a potato digger:
- welded skeleton. made from a profile;
- steel cutter;
- rollers for belt movement;
- assembly from steel strip reinforcement;
- fasteners.
The “drum” potato digger has successfully proven itself in the processing of vast areas.
The apparatus is made of the following elements:
- skeleton with wheels in the form of a frame;
- cutter knife;
- drum-shaped containers made of reinforcement.
The cutter is mounted to the base using special hinges. Its function is to remove soil below the tubers that enter the rotating container. The spinning hollow container removes the tubers that remain in the container from the soil. Then the vegetables move to the end of the container and fall on the ground in a peeled form.
The drum is attached to the tractor shaft by means of a gear train and a reducer. a torque impulse is received from it. The crescent cutter allows the soil to be opened to a decent depth, which ensures the preservation of the crop. Such a device provides insignificant yield losses, tubers are also practically not subject to mechanical defects.
Required tools
For work, you will need the following materials and tools:
- alloy steel pipes with a diameter of 4 cm;
- corners of the “six”;
- reinforcement with a thickness of 10 mm;
- chain;
- gears;
- turbine;
- welder;
- adjustable wrench;
- drill;
- bolts with nuts and lock washers.
Good steel is essential for making a share. it should be quite thick (at least 4 mm). The design has a welded frame, suspensions, rods, which will allow you to adjust dynamic elements. wheels and hooks.
Making the unit yourself is not particularly difficult. Such a potato digger can really be used on any, even very dense soils.
Craftsmen independently design two types of potato diggers.
- fan-shaped;
- thundering.
The situation with the creation of conveyor and drum units is a little more complicated, since their designs will be a little more complicated, but technically, it is quite possible to implement the creation of such units.
If you have to harvest on vast areas, then you should pay attention to the roaring or conveyor potato digger. For a summer cottage or garden plot of 10 acres, a fan digger may well be suitable.
The disadvantages of all potato diggers are that they do not “take out” the entire crop. Tubers that grow away from the cultivated strip do not fall into the field of action of the plow.
Features of creating a potato digger for a tiller with your own hands
- Required tools
- Manufacturing process
- Fan
- Rumbling
- Conveyor
- How to attach to a tiller?
A good harvest with minimal losses is important for both farmers and summer residents. If the plot is quite large, then a potato digger can come to the aid of harvesting potatoes. for a potato digger can range from 6.5 to 13 thousand rubles. It makes sense to make a potato digger on your own for small sown areas. Industrial equipment is usually bought from various trading platforms.
Manufacturing process
Drawings of a potato digger are drawn up by analogy with diagrams that are easy to find on the Internet. When buying a tiller, an instruction manual is attached, which indicates the dimensions and other parameters of the attachment (weight, digging depth). Based on these data, you can find the necessary information and, on its basis, compose your own version of the potato unit. This option seems to be very rational, since each tiller has its own characteristics.
The algorithm for creating an aggregate is as follows: a pipe with a diameter of 45 mm is cut into four parts. For example, this can be done in this way: two pieces of pipe measuring 1205 mm each and two pieces of 805 mm each. Then a rectangle is drawn up on a flat plane, the joints are welded by welding. Jumpers are also welded, which will serve as control rods. Then it is necessary to create vertical mounts. they will ensure the installation of vertical rods, which are responsible for control.
After that, the racks are attached, which must hold the vertical load. The lintels are attached at a slight distance from the edge of the frame. The squares should have parameters 35×35 mm, and the length should be 50 cm.The racks are connected to each other with jumpers.
Then you need to mount the shaft. Stainless steel sheets are used, the thickness of which should be 0.4 mm. The sheets are bonded to each other by welding. After that, it is the turn of the rods. they will implement the work of the “strainers”. This technique makes it possible to effectively harvest a good harvest of root crops in the shortest possible time.
The standard design consists of the following elements:
- metal frame (from pipes or corners);
- plow. cutter;
- device that transports the product;
- connecting pulley;
- connecting rod;
- drive belt;
- support rack;
- wheels;
- springs;
- bevel gear transmission belt.
Rumbling
The screening mechanism is based on the vibration principle and consists of a share and a sieve.
With the help of a ploughshare. a “knife”, sunk in the ground to a depth of 25 cm, a layer of earth is undermined together with root crops. Soil with tubers remains on the trellis. Due to vibration impulses, the soil flies around the tubers and rolls down, and the peeled potatoes enter the container.
The scheme is efficient, but it is technically quite difficult to make such a unit, since certain qualifications are needed.
The design consists of three blocks:
- knife;
- dynamic grilles;
- frames.
You will need the following tool:
- drill;
- hammer;
- set of drills;
- bolts;
- nippers or pliers;
- reinforcement (10 mm);
- hinges;
- eccentric;
- marker.
First, the profile of the required dimensions is cut to make the frame, which is then welded. Supports are mounted from below, wheels are put on them. In the frame itself, the hinge fasteners are mounted on which the screen is placed.
Fasteners are welded to the frame. a gearbox is placed on them, special devices that provide vibration. The mesh of the box is welded from the reinforcement, which is fixed inside the frame. A gearbox is installed. it provides the required vibration. It is connected to a rumble. Through the lever device and the connecting rod, the impulse from the rotation of the shaft is fed to the roar, as a result of which vibrating impulses arise that generate rotational movements of the eccentric.
A ploughshare is cut out of steel, which is attached to the bottom of the frame. Wheels are attached to the unit. The knife can be both concave and slightly convex.
The cutter lifts the soil with root crops, after which they fall into a roar, along which they roll, freeing themselves from the ground. Then the tubers fall from the surface of the trellis to the ground. The advantage of this device is that the gripping takes place with a width of 0.45 meters. The depth of penetration into the ground is almost 0.3 meters. The yield loss is relatively small. up to 10%.
The disadvantages of the unit are that there is increased vibration, which is transmitted to the operator, and this gets tired quite quickly. Also, before starting work, all tops should be removed from the site in order to ensure the normal passability of the tiller. In some cases vibration is reduced by installing two eccentrics.
How to attach to a tiller?
Different units may be suitable for different tillers. If the tiller has a mass of up to 150 kg, then it can be used on a par with ordinary potato diggers. The potato digger moves around the site at a minimum speed, so the unit must have sufficient pulling power.
Not every engine will be able to “keep” the minimum speed. gasoline power plants often stall at a speed of 1-2 kilometers per hour. Diesel tillers are better at such tasks. such devices are suitable for vibration units of average parameters. Heavy tillers can work with any type of aggregate. Based on the parameters of the tiller, you can select the desired unit.
the tiller can have both a universal mount and only attach to a certain type of mechanism. Vibrating diggers are commonly used.
When creating a potato digger (or buying one), consider the width of the cultivated soil strip and the depth. The speed of the device usually does not exceed two kilometers per hour. this is the maximum value.
It is also worth considering the quality and nature of the soil on the site. For example, the KKM potato digger can work only with soils, the moisture content of which does not exceed 30%. Typically, the productivity of a potato digger is no more than 0.21 hectares per hour.
For how to make a potato digger with your own hands, see the next video.
Drawings of a potato digger for a tiller: dimensions, photo
Detailed drawings of a fan-type potato digger for a tiller photo and video devices in operation.
As you know, there are two types of potato diggers for tillers, fan and vibration, the easiest fan-type digger to manufacture, we will consider its device.
A fan digger is an attachment, in this version for a tiller, this is how this device looks like.
The device for digging out potatoes is a plow with a fan of rods, during the movement of the tiller, the plow cuts into the soil and lifts it onto the lattice of rods, in turn, the rods loosen and sift the soil, while the potato tubers are thrown out over the soil.
The video shows the principle of operation of the fan potato digger.
To make a potato digger for a tiller, you can use the provided drawings with dimensions and photos.
Drawing of a potato digger for tiller.
A homemade product consists of several parts:
- Bipod.
- Field bar.
- Cultivator paw.
- Teeth.
Another option.
Option for making a plow for digging potatoes.
The photo shows the system for adjusting the depth and angle of the plow. Holes in the bipod allow you to adjust the depth of the plow’s immersion in the soil.
Plow angle adjustment.
Modified Horse Drawn Potato Digger In Action.
In this video, the author shows a DIY potato planter.