Hello everyone, welcome to our “Fresh from the drawing board” section. Let me tell you about our spring-loaded rubber-finger weeding system, the Springerhacke. We managed to come up with a nice name, didn’t we?
It all started when we wanted to cultivate lavender. Next to it, only the BUSA Rotor can go, but what about the row spacing? Our best bad solution is the K.U.L.T. Fingerhacke. It’s not perfect because it only works if the weed is weaker than the main plant and only works as long as the weeds are small, but it’s still better than all the other solutions. The problem is that lavender grows large, so the rubber-finger star hoe (I won’t write that again :D) can’t reach through, can’t get in. Not even the largest one, which is very, very expensive (I mean large).
If the mountain won’t come to Mohammed, Mohammed must go to the mountain. Let’s follow the row with a long swing arm and a vertical pivot point. If the plant is wide, it should move aside; if there’s a gap, it should close. Voila! Springerhacke 1.0
From another perspective, the same situation applies in plantations. No matter how big the Fingerhacke is, if its diameter is 80 cm, half of that is 40 cm, and if half a finger’s width is the brain, then 20 cm must move around the trunks. Add to that the fact that we drive the tractor with +/– 5 cm accuracy, and the trees grow +/– 5 cm to the right or left, and we can’t even guide the whole thing along the centerline. But if we put half of the newly developed Springerhacke on the side of the GYMF row cultivator… The Springerhacke 2.0, the trunk tracer, is born.
