Claas puts tracks under harvesters to save soil

Claas has won an innovation gold medal for putting rubber crawler tracks under forage harvesters.

The tracks are raised automatically during turning manoeuvres, so that they don’t churn up the headland.

The crawler unit increases the length of the Jaguar 960 TT forage harvester by about a metre, but this new extended wheelbase is seen as a bonus in machine maintenance, because it offers improved access to the corn-cracker and the accelerator.

It was revealed as one of the top SIMA innovation winners during the recent SIMA preview, ahead of the SIMA Paris International Agribusiness Show on February 24-28.

Crawler tracks are particularly useful on harvesters in wet ground conditions, except for the ground churning and soil damage at headlands.

However, when the Jaguar 960 Terra Trac makes a turn of more than 27 degrees, raising of the tracks is automatically triggered.

The average soil pressure exerted by the remaining surface area (approximately 60%) is still lower than that of a standard set of tyres, and the Jaguar 960 Terra Trac also has remote rear tyre inflation, as part of a combination designed for better soil protection.

On the road, the vehicle can travel at 40 km per hour, with travel width of three metres.

The other SIMA 2019 gold medal winner for innovation goes to Laforge, a company that specialises in tractor- implement interfaces.

It has cracked the problem of implements not always following straight behind a tractor being steered by GPS guidance system.

Laforge’s gold medal-winning DynaTrac is compatible with all models of tractors equipped with an RTK or camera guidance system.

And it fits with all implements, making it possible to follow the tractor path with any implement, while reaping the benefits of guidance for precision farming at every stage of the crop (for example, strip till, seeding, weeding, fertilisation).

It corrects implement deviations without creating any other restriction on the tractor or the implement (it removes the need for trajectory maintenance discs).

It guarantees positioning of the trailed implement to about one centimetre.

Trajectories are more accurate, and equipment can work in better conditions, even on sloping and irregular land.