UK sprayer manufacturer, Knight Farm Machinery, unveiled a new in-house developed system that allows sprayers equipped with boom recirculation to incorporate chemical injection.
“Because established chemical injection systems are designed to inject before the spray lines, there is a significant time lag from the point of injection to the point at which the product arrives at all of the nozzles, creating a particular problem when patch-spraying”, says Brian Knight, managing director.
“With the boom recirculation systems fitted to mainstream sprayers, chemical is circulated back to the tank– but of course, unless modified this isn’t compatible with chemical injection, as the tank contents would become contaminated.
"The new Smart-Inject development overcomes this by injecting chemical at the nozzle body, so base and injected products are handled separately until the point of application, with the rates of each independently variable in real time.
"With environmental pressures driving reduced chemical use, plus optical camera systems to aid spot spraying becoming established, it makes patch and spot spraying simple.”
Smart-Inject (patent pending), harnesses the benefits of pulse-width modulation (PWM) to enable injection of chemical at the nozzle, with application rate controllable by altering the frequency of the PWM valve.
An alternative version has also been developed for use with sprayers equipped with Knight Individual Nozzle Switching (KINS).
“This can be used in conjunction with the development of optical technology that recognises green on green and green on brown imaging. Smart-Inject is retrofittable and ideal for patch spraying, avoiding the need to estimate how much chemical to pre-mix, because it is injected in real time. Two different tank mixes are not required.
"We intend to make Smart-Inject available through a third-party manufacturer to produce this technology for sale to sprayer makers globally,” added Brian.
New contour-following boom tech
Knight also unveiled its new Contour Master terrain-tracking technology for all Knight sprayers with tri-fold booms (30-42m), which uses four sensors across the boom in combination with advanced software to provide highly accurate contour-following.
It controls the boom height, boom levelling and variable geometry of each boom side (+/-5o) to keep the nozzles at a consistent height from the crop/ground.
It also showcased a new 6G version of Contour Master that uses six sensors and Knight’s own developments to manage additional variable geometry points between the inner and outer boom sections.
Trialled during development on both self-propelled and Trailblazer trailed sprayers, the 6G system adds full independent automatic movement of the outer boom sections to the existing boom contour-following.
These provide 8 degrees of movement at the boom ends in both upward and downward directions, to prevent outer sections fouling the ground and ensure all nozzles are kept at the required height. Contour Master 6G will also be available as an option on Knight self-propelled and Trailblazer trailed sprayers with tri-fold booms of 30m and above.