| Arable
Gaining maximum life from cultivation points
Minimising wear part cost £/ hectare, as well minimising that all-important downtime is critical to the bottom line. As soil conditions become more challenging, and weather becomes drier, day-to-day soil-engaging wear part costs become an ever more important part of farm life... by Rupert Coggon, Business Development Director, Ferobide.
F ortunately there are several options of wear protection available on the market to enable longer operation lifetimes of wear parts. They have seen great success, so much so that sales of protected spare parts exceed normal hardened steel. Wear Protection Currently Available on the Market
There are several standard wear materials available currently, all giving a compromise on ease-of-use and performance. These range from highly resistant yet difficult to use brazed tungsten carbide, to hardface welding wire with low resistance.
Another factor is how they can be easily customised. In this regards,“ Ferobide”, a highly resistant weld-on tungsten carbide steel composite plate made in the UK, stands out from the rest. It puts the control over wear protection in the hands of the end-user. The Limitations of Standard Wear Protection
Over the past decade, the use of tungsten carbide has grown strongly. With its high abrasion re-sistance it became the optimum material for preventing wear on cultivation points and associated wearing parts- but it has its drawbacks. The other option is the easier yet slow to apply standard hardface welding wire( which lacks abrasion resistance).
26 | Farming Monthly | January 2017
Brazed Tungsten Carbide
In order to braize tungsten carbide, the host steel is heated to cherry red, it is this heating which causes steel to lose its previous hardness. The large majority of users of traditionally brazed tungsten carbide are often highly frustrated in that the softened supporting steel now wears and fails prematurely.
Tungsten carbide is so wear resistant meaning ~ 90 % of the expensive tungsten carbide remains and must be disposed of. This increases down-time and wear part costs.
Users can be frustrated at losing the full potential of traditional tungsten carbide tile as its support is softened via brazing and thus fails prematurely. This leads to great loss of operational time and increases wear part costs. Why not apply more tungsten carbide?
Tungsten carbide is expensive, machining the steel point and brazing the tungsten adds even more to this cost, making the finished parts many times more expensive than standard hardened steel components. Understandably, the minimum amount of tungsten is applied to the tip the point. The Need to Customise Wear Protection
The biggest issue is that each farmer has different soil types, works at different speeds and different depths. This means that cultivation points wear in different ways on each farm, some fail due to side wear, some to wear on the face of the tine, some due to wear from below the tine. There will be a different place to add extra tungsten correctly to cultivation points and it is often only the farmer who knows exactly where it is needed. The solution of combining wear materials to back up brazed tungsten
Weld-on tungsten-carbide: steel composite tiles have similar wear rates to the brazed tungsten carbide tiles but can be welded exactly where needed. The welding of composite tungsten tiles to compliment brazed tungsten carbide has been proven over 3 seasons to dramatically extend life-time, avoid downtime and allow the brazed tungsten point to give its full performance potential
This could result in end-users easily getting 3- 5 times the working life from tungsten points, and avoids wasting brazed tungsten carbide material.
Ferobide is the trade name of tungstencarbide: steel composite material. It has been proven across Europe, Canada and Australia as being the perfect partner to all tungsten carbide tipped points on plough points, drill openers, subsoiler points, wings and shins as well as power harrow tines.
It is suitable for low-drag cultivation equipment used to reduce soil disturbance to reduce black grass spread.
More information at www. ferobide. com
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