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Albert O’Neill runs a dairy farm outside Artigarvan, Co Tyrone, in partnership with his parents, John and Evelyn, and brother, Wesley.
While the 200-cow milking herd is the main focus of the day-to-day workload, Albert has long exhibited his engineering ability with a series of innovative machines and projects that simplify herd management and routine tasks.
In 2021, he designed, fabricated and brought the Tyreshift 350 to market through his side enterprise, Ballyheather Engineering.
The Tyreshift 350 is a self-loading and self-distributing machine that takes the hardship out of covering a silage clamp with tyres. Several features of the design are patent-pending.
The basic design starts with a headframe with a hydraulic motor fitted. Extending from the headframe is a 3.5m steel (hence the name) box section that lifts, holds and discharges tyres.
Currently, the machine will cost around £1,700 (€2,050) before VAT. Outlined are some of the main features of the Tyreshift’s design
Pictures one and two
Manufactured on farm by Albert, the finished machine is shot-blasted and given a double coat of two-pack paint with customers able to select their preferred colour.
To speed up production, Albert gets the steel pre-folded and drilled. This means he just needs to assemble and weld sections before sending to a neighbour for painting.
Picture three
The Tyreshift 350 is fitted to any loader using pallet forks and chained for security. The design can be tailored to fit differing fork widths. A hydraulic motor is also mounted to the headframe and powers the chain that lifts and discharges tyres.
Picture four
Fitted to the central box section is the drive chain, which is recessed into a hard-wearing nylon-sided run channel.
The first two prototypes used a steel runner channel. However, since switching to the nylon version, the drive function is more efficient and smoother as there is less friction from metal on metal.
The chain rotates in both directions to load and discharge tyres, as desired.
Picture five
The chain also has several large flanges mounted at regular intervals to catch the tyre’s side walls and move them backwards and forwards on the main load bar.
Picture six
As the machine is primarily used for covering silage pits, a neat feature is a secure holder to safely lift the plastic cover on to the pit.
Pictures seven and eight
The machine can easily load pre-stacked tyres. But thanks to the chain mechanism and tilt function on the loader, it can also pick up tyres that are scattered around the side walls of the clamp without any need for manual handling.
Other innovations on albert’s farm
The Tyreshift 350 is just one of many designs that Albert has made on farm. Others include a hydraulic grader for maintaining farm roadways and cow tracks, a trailing shoe for the slurry tanker complete with seed box for clover seed, a loader mounted scraper for cleaning out concrete feed bunkers in the cow shed and a squeeze crush for cattle handling. The Tyreshift 350 and other inventions can be viewed online at Ballyheather Engineering.
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