Another undercutter.

[Ironman]

The history of this is that I had a small tractor that was ideal size but too narrow for the wide rows of garlic we grow. I was looking for a bigger tractor and when Camdigger upgraded his machine, I bought his old unit. I am happy as a pig in shit with it, but now I have had to upgrade my tiller and brush hog and the garlic undercutter for the garlic harvest at end of July.
My rows are 36" wide and the other undercutter I built was 40" so there was little to no wiggle room, and mistakes got made.

So I have developed a plan and done some cutting and welding.

[Ironman]

Well, I can't find the pictures I took of the assembly of the pieces onto the 2x2x1/4" tube, so here is what I have.

[Ironman]

In the background you can see the knife in the vise and then attached to the implement.
The two bars marked weight, are there because I have a chunk of steel 52" long with a weight of 336lb so that will mean I have no need of a human rider to ad weight.

Items yet to do:
I have to create a leg to mount on the weight so that when I unhook the cutter it will sit on the blade and rear leg, so it does not do a backflip and then I have to get the mini-X to stand it up when I need to re-attach.

And then clean it up and paint it. Whats that rumbling noise?..........sorry Rod, I said paint again.

[Whitetrash]

So, Gerry are you just using weight and Grunt from the new bigger Tractor ? I sorta remember some maybe experimentation with some sort of reciprocating arrangement with the smaller rig

[Ironman]

Yes, that's it.
The reciprocating thing was to use the existing tractor we had, at 18hp and 1700lb. So the difference is impressive with 36hp and 3160lb. A 5ft tiller does not even make it work at half throttle.
It's not so much that the Kubota had no power, it had enough. But the real obstacle was that it was not a row crop machine. I had spools on the front and rear wheels to make it wide enough and then it was a bear to steer. This tractor will widen out to 80 inches by moving some bolts and flipping rear rims around.

All the rest is just a bonus.

[arizonian]

Originally Posted by Ironman

In the background you can see the knife in the vise and then attached to the implement.
The two bars marked weight, are there because I have a chunk of steel 52" long with a weight of 336lb so that will mean I have no need of a human rider to ad weight.

Items yet to do:
I have to create a leg to mount on the weight so that when I unhook the cutter it will sit on the blade and rear leg, so it does not do a backflip and then I have to get the mini-X to stand it up when I need to re-attach.

And then clean it up and paint it. Whats that rumbling noise?..........sorry Rod, I said paint again.

Damn! I forgot you had a plasma table. Implement looks sharp as... well, never mind.

So 52" / (2 x 12") x 336 lbs = 728 ftlbs

Now divide that by the length of the bar from pivot point to the end of the undercutter, say 18"? (1.5ft) and your effective force is 485 lbs, and you can always add more if the need arises.

A swing-away leg, perhaps? Something that you can pin in the up position and it will add even more weight!

[arizonian]

I need to add that the tube cross member, sq or round, is a good choice, resists torsional buckling.

[LKeithR]

Back in the day there was a provincial tree nursery (before privatization) not far from our shop and we made several undercutters (they called them underplows) like that for them. If I remember right they were about six feet wide and they also sometimes wanted to go deeper so we had to make them with a little longer legs. We just bought standard bucket cutting edge for the cutter. I know they pulled it with a decent sized tractor but I think that was just because that's what they had.

Is the forklift new--to you at least? And the press? I don't remember you having them when I was there last...

[toprecycler]

Looks like a good project. Part of the fun of a build project is taking what you learned in the past projects, and building on that.


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[Ironman]

Originally Posted by toprecycler

Looks like a good project. Part of the fun of a build project is taking what you learned in the past projects, and building on that.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yes, that's right. I learned a bit from my failures.
I sharpened the blade on the mill with a 1/2" corncob endmill, and then took the last grooves out with an angle grinder so things will slide well.
I never thought of using a grader cutting edge, but I used a strip of 11mm T1 steel for the first one and it pulled hard, which is why I tried the vibrating deal on version 2. The narrow blade uses less hp to do the job, for sure.
Bill, yer right, the leg will swing away.

Keith, No, I had the forklift a while and I posted about it here. It was an electric and I converted to gas and hydraulic drive. Sometime befor 2009 when I built the new shop, cause the conversion was done in the old schoolhouse.