Valion seed tube guards
from Exapta
Oftentimes we will hear that our goal is to have a “True V” trench. However, this is actually not the case. If you don’t have a good flat bottom to your trench, your seed will not be at a consistent depth, and if you are using a firmer, it won’t be able to get consistently down to the seed. This is actually the way the disk openers are designed on a planter. If you look at the bottom dead center of the openers, the blades are spread apart which is where they have spread apart the soil as well. Over time, as the inner guard wears, it will allow the disk to flex in more resulting in a narrower trench. The Valion keeps the lower edge of the blades at the optimum distance from each other so that the blades create a furrow of useful width.
Extremely High Wear
Valion™ seed tube guards greatly reduce blade flex to create a properly shaped furrow and improved planting depth control. Typically, we find that the OEM seed tube guard will wear out much before the opener disks. So growers rarely get them changed when they really need to be. We believe that the seed tube guard is one of the most overlooked underrated maintenance items on a planter and have found that a Standard OEM seed tube guards can wear substantially in just a few hours of use (esp. older John Deere & Kinze). These chrome Valions will outlast OEM guards by 2 to 4X, so that furrows are properly shaped and seeds placed at the correct depth all the way through the planting season.
Oh, and they also eliminate seed tube wear!
Wear Testing:
We took a case study of how much wear the Valion actually had on them with a local farmer. We measured at two different points on the inner guards and compared them against new. Here are the results that we found:
Summary of wear:
- Bottom Wear per Acre: 0.0000054"
- Middle Wear per Acre: 0.0000020"
- Annual Wear on 1000 acres:
- Bottom: 0.0054"
- Middle: 0.0020"
