AGRICULTURAL MACHINERY FUNCTIONAL AND SAFETY TESTING

SERVICE

TEST REPORT No. 17 - 008

SHELL-FRUIT GROUND PICKER:

JOLLY 2800

MANUFACTURER:

GF COSTRUZIONI MACCHINE AGRICOLE S.R.L. Via Cassia Cimina Km 29.200 – Loc. XXX Miglia – 01015 Sutri (VT)

Rome, November 2004

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TESTS CARRIED OUT IN COMPLIANCE WITH ENAMA SPECIFICATIONS NO. 17 REV. 1 –

DECEMBER 2003 BY EXPERIMENTAL INSTITUTE FOR AGRICULTURAL MECHANISATION, MONTEROTONDO - ROME. ♦ FOR PERFORMANCE: Ing.Giovanni Santoro Dott.Agr. Roberto Fanigliulo Dott.Agr.Daniele Pochi

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DESCRIPTION OF MACHINE 3

TECHNICAL DATA 5

TEST CONDITIONS 7 Tractor used 7

Characteristics of test ground 7

Characteristics of collected produce 8 RESULTS OF TESTS 8

NOTES ON FUNCTIONALITY 10

REMARKS AND INSTRUCTIONS 11

ROAD CIRCULATION 11

TESTING OF SAFETY REQUIREMENTS 11

TO FACILITATE INTERPRETATION OF THE RESULTS, IT SHOULD BE REMEMBERED THAT: ♦ 1 MPa = 1000 kPa ≈ 10 bar ≈ 10 kgforce/cm2

♦ 1 daN ≈ 1.02 kgforce

♦ 1 m/s = 3.6 km/h

MANUFACTURER: G.F. COSTRUZIONI MACCHINE AGRICOLE S.r.l

Tel./Fax. 0761.571334 email: gf.srl@virgilio.it – http:// www.gf-srl.it

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DESCRIPTION OF MACHINE The G.F. ground picker, model “Jolly 2800”, is a semi-mounted agricultural implement hitched to a tractor with PTO and front 3-point hitch (ISO category 2). It is designed for use as a shell-fruit ground picker (hazelnuts, walnuts, chestnuts, almonds) on both bare and grassy terrain, with transportation of the produce after mechanical sorting in sacks arranged on a work platform or in a trailer connected to the rear of the tractor. In the latter case only one op-erator is required for its functioning. The underframe consists of a welded steel plate structure; a second tubular steel frame, welded to the first, has the task of connecting to the front three-point hitch of the tractor. The main frame contains the drop box that transmits drive from the tractor’s PTO to the working parts of the implement; the box contains oil-bath constant straight-tooth bevel gear.

The drop box is connected on one side to the tractor’s PTO via a cardan shaft, having a size adequate for all incoming power, and on the other to a cross-drive shaft, which in turn is connected to a multiplier to operate a centrifugal fan, whose job is to facilitate the mechanical sorting and transportation of cleaned produce to storage containers. Drive is transmitted to working parts via gear-based kinematic motion, with gears connected via a chain and placed on both sides of the machine, enabling parts to rotate at different speeds. The implement works on the principle that a rotating brush picks up fruit lying on the ground. The brush is arranged in front of and crosswise to the direction of the tractor. There are also two separate working chambers that see to the cleaning of the produce using mechani-cal devices (figure 1).

Figure 1 – Diagram showing functioning of G.F. picker. Jolly 2800.

Pickup brush

Conveyor auger

Fan

1st upper cleaning chamber

2nd upper clean-ing chamber

Defoliator rollers

Conveyor auger

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A moveable bulkhead is on the front of the machine, serving to close on two sides the rotation chamber of the pickup brush to prevent fruit from falling out. Thanks to an idle cross-wise roller, it follows the contours of the land, ensuring that the front of the chamber remains closed. The pickup brush, consisting of combs with flexible plastic teeth, ro-tates in the opposite direction to that

of the wheels; skirting the surface, it picks up and pushes produce towards an initial horizontal conveyor, consist-ing of a shaft with helical rubber blades, whose job is to convey the fruit and foreign bodies picked up (soil, leaves, sheels, vine shoots) towards the exit. During this move-ment the produce is in contact with a series of metal defoliator rollers un-derneath, which cause the soil and leaves present to fall off the fruit and return to the ground.

Figure 2 – Diagram of the tested machine and its parts. 1) headstock to tractor’s 3-point hitch; 2) drop box unit from PTO of tractor; 3) over-load clutch; 4) centrifugal fan; 5) air outlet for conveying clean produce to storage containers; 6) air inlet for the first upper auger; 7) air inlet for the second upper auger; 8) coupling to lower 3rd point; 9) support and movement wheel; 10) PTO with protec-tion of cardan shaft; 11) machine identification plate; 12) outlet for disposal of coarser pieces onto the ground.

1 2 3 4

56 78911 12 10

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At the exit of the first work chamber a series of blades fitted to the auger shaft power two adjacent chambers, each consisting of a cleaning auger and relative underlying sifting meshes. Below these chambers is a fourth auger for cleaning and trans-porting the produce to the air outlet, which is designed to transport the product to the storage containers. The two upper augers separate the produce from the coarser foreign bodies (stony and woody materials, leaves), which are conveyed via air streams generated by a fan to an

opening for their disposal onto the ground, while the produce falls to the lower cleaning auger via an appropri-ately-sized sifting mesh. This auger, the base of which is a grid of metal bars, again separates fruit from finer materials that are still present, then conveys the fruit to an air stream, which pushes the cleaned produce to the packaging unit or rear trailer via a connecting plastic hose. Fig. 2 shows a diagram of the ma-chine being tested for operative per-formance, with a work face of 1.8 m.

TECHNICAL DATA

SERIAL NUMBER OF TESTED MACHINE: 001

Size max. width (mm) 2120 max. length (mm) 1780 total height (mm) 1050 Frame type welded steel plate; coupling to tractor 3-point hitch (ISO cat. 1 and

2). Drive transmission from PTO cardan shaft; main transmission drop box with constant

straight-tooth bevel gear (18 teeth);

transmission to working parts the cross-drive shaft leaving the drop box is connected to working parts via chain drives with different gear ratios;

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Working parts Pickup brush standard parts flexible plastic teeth; number of combs 28 (arranged in 8 rows) number of teeth on each comb 21 width (mm) 1800 upper width of combs (mm) 370 lower width of combs (mm) 235 overall diameter (mm) 490 Transfer and cleaning augers type helical rubber blades; number of spiral parts 10 width (mm) 1800 overall diameters (mm) transfer auger 310 1st upper cleaning auger 280 2nd upper cleaning auger 250 lower cleaning auger 220 Speed of rotation (with PTO at 540 rpm) pickup brush (rpm) 270 transfer auger (rpm) 270 1st upper cleaning auger (rpm) 180 2nd upper cleaning auger (rpm) 200 lower cleaning auger (rpm) 385 defoliator rollers (rpm) 172 Fan type centrifugal diameter of fan (mm) 400 no. of blades 8 operation belt operated, via tractor’s

PTO; flow adjustment by varying the motor rotation

speed; diameter of outlet (mm) 115 Sifting mesh type semi-cylindrical material iron plate width (mm) 1800 length (mm) 290

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shape of opening circular mesh opening (mm) 26 interchangeable cage upon request for different fruit types PTO power needed to operate implement as per laboratory tests (kW) 12.5 (with PTO at 540 rpm) Measured mass

total (kg) 530

TEST CONDITIONS The picking machine was tested at a nut-growing farm in the municipality of Caprarola (Viterbo) in September 2004. Before tests were performed samples of the produce were gathered from five different points of the test ground to assess the characteristics of said pro-duction. During testing further samples of pro-duce collected in the storage container were taken at regular intervals. The same number of samples were taken from the ground after the machine’s passage to ascertain how much pro-duce remained on the ground. At the conclusion of each test the global mass of collected produce was taken and weighed. Tractor used To operate the implement (Fig. 3) a 4-wheel drive reversible tractor,

having a rating of 47 kW and overall mass of 1,930 kg, was used. The PTO speed was set in the corresponding position at 540 rpm. The tractor had an ISO category 2 three-point hitch. Characteristics of test ground The test bed was a hazelnut grove of about 23 years, consisting of multi-stem plants growing on a flat piece at a plant-ing distance of 5.0 x 5.0 m. The hazelnut grove is managed using a controlled grassing technique, with 4-5 passages of the mower a year to main-tain the grassy covering; the most re-cent cut was 3 weeks before harvest-ing. The surface humidity of the soil in the top layer down to a depth of 100 mm was 26%.

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Figure 3 – The ground picker at work.

Characteristics of collected pro-duce Gathering tests were performed on hazelnuts of the Tonda Gentile Ro-mana variety, which possessed the morphological properties shown in table 1. The amount of produce present on the ground (collectable production) was calculated at 0.29 kg/m2.

roundness index 0.95

average weight of nucules (g) 2.0

percentage of empty shells (%)

2.4

Table 1 – Morphological properties of gathered produce. RESULTS OF TESTS To obtain an optimal working set-up the “Jolly 2800” ground picker was

regulated by staff of the firm G.F. outside the area of the test ground. Adjustments were concerned with forward speed on the basis of the amount of produce lying on the ground. To avoid breakage of lower branches caused by the tractor pass-ing by with the trailer, the fruit present on the ground was moved toward the centre of tractor lanes. The machine made one passage along each swath, having a width of 1.80 m; the produce gathered was stored in a trailer at-tached to the rear of the tractor. Functional and operational character-istics were then determined, referring to the surface area of one hectare, as indicated in table 2. Tests on the pickup machine were conducted at a tractor speed of 1.69 km/h, believed to be adequate for normal working conditions using the implement being tested, and in view of test conditions. This speed was within the range recommended by the manufacturer and is the highest

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speed at which problems pertaining to the skipping or flooding of the ma-chine have been encountered. In these conditions the operating capacity of the G.F. “Jolly 2800” ground picker was calculated at 3,800 m2/h, considering the incidence of

additional turn-round time out of total time, with an hourly output of 2.63 t/h. Fuel consumption was 3.14 kg/h per unit of time and 4.00 kg/ha per unit of surface area.

operating parameters performance

theoretical working width (m) 1.80 effective working width (m) 1.80 effective working time (h/ha) 2.48 operating working time (h/ha) 2.61 operating yield (%) 95.1 operating working capacity (ha/h) 0.38 brush passages per metre worked (no.) 16.1 effective average speed (km/h) 1.69 operative hourly output (t/h) 2.63 hourly fuel consumption (kg/h) 3.14 unit fuel consumption (kg/ha) 4.00 hourly consumption per metre of operating width (kg/h m) 1.74

Table 2 – Average values of results obtained with G.F. “Jolly 2800” ground picker during tests on gathering of hazelnuts. With regard to an assessment of the quality of work performed by the ground picker, gathered produce was analysed by taking samples from the storage container at regular intervals. Results are given in table 3: it can be seen that gathered produce contained impurities to the extent of 2.9%.

The analysis of ground loss of produce verified during gathering tests, due to fruit not gathered by the machine and fruit present at machine disposal points, showed that the implement was able to pick up produce lying on the ground with a loss percentage of 8.49% (table 4).

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Elements %

fruit 97.1 wood 0.9 full shells 0.4 empty shells 0.4 broken shells 0.3 leaves 0.6 soil 0.3 Total 100

Table 3 – Analysis of cleaning of gath-ered produce.

Elements % Gathered produce 91.51 Loss of non-gathered fruit

2.12

Loss of fruit from dis-posal outlet

6.37

Total 100

Table 4 – Analysis of gatherable pro-duce loss. NOTES ON FUNCTIONALITY During the testing of performance the machine showed a good working capac-ity, considering that a little over two and a half hours were required to collect produce from a hazel grove covering one hectare. This value can undoubtedly be im-proved if gathered produce is collected in sacks rather than a trailer, thus re-ducing the size of the tractor-trailer system and the time needed to turn around inside the hazel grove. In such cases however an additional worker

would be required to handle sacks on the loading platform. In addition to a good operating capacity, the gathering efficiency of the imple-ment under review was 91.5% of the produce available in the swath thanks to optimal preparation of the field surface, which was well rolled and devoid of holes and hollows. Analysis of the cleaning of produce collected and stored in the trailer showed very few impurities and broken shells, showing that the working parts of the picker, and above all the presence of the second upper cleaning auger, permit excellent sorting of the product and do not damage the product during the various work phases. One aspect setting apart the G.F. “Jolly 2800” ground picker is the possibility of working on both tilled and rolled terrain and natural grassy surfaces, which in the period prior to harvesting may con-tain many weeds (especially Rumex spp.) because of the frequent summer rains. With other types of harvesting machines, such as suction machines, it would be necessary to employ weedkill-ers, not being able to use a mower in view of the presence of the produce on the ground. The G.F. “Jolly 2800” ground picker is thus able to pick up the produce from the ground even if the surface is grassy, in terms of both density and height of the grass, thus reducing environmental impact for the nut-growing ecosystem as a whole, it not being necessary to use chemical weedkillers. The machine may also release a limited amount of dust into the surrounding environment, firstly because the hazel-nut pickup brush sweeping the ground is mounted in the protective carter and secondly due to the absence of fans for cleaning the product, which for the G.F. “Jolly 2800” is effected mechanically. Finally, the ground picker requires a minimum of maintenance, rendered

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simple thanks to the ease with which all working parts of the machine can be inspected and removed.

REMARKS AND INSTRUCTIONS The implement is endowed with instruc-tion and maintenance handbook in compliance with existing law provisions.

ROAD CIRCULATION For the purposes of the Highway Code the machine is classified as a trailed agricultural machine, and is therefore an integral part of the tractor (art. 57, Legislative Decree 285 of 30/04/1992), it does not require type approval and may circulate on the road providing it complies with mass and jolt ratios with the tractor and law provisions.

TESTING OF SAFETY REQUIREMENTS The machine is endowed with CE mark-ing, an identification plate, safety picto-grams, a user and maintenance hand-book and an EC manufacturer’s decla-ration of conformity. The EC manufacturer’s declaration of conformity certifies that the machine conforms to the following harmonised standards and technical specifications: UNI EN 1553:2001 and ISO 11684:1995. Checks carried out with reference to documentation sent by the manufac-turer did not show up inconsistencies with the contents of the aforementioned standards. The relative documentation has been filed.

THE PRESENT TEST REPORT IS VALID FOR A PERIOD OF FIVE YEARS OR UNTIL REFERENCE STANDARDS FOR THE SHELL-FRUIT GROUND PICKER MOD. JOLLY 2800 ARE ALTERED, AND IS OFFICIALLY RECOGNISED BY ENAMA MEMBERS:

ASSOCAP (Associazione Nazionale dei Consorzi Agrari) (National Association of Agricultural Consortia) CIA (Confederazione Italiana Agricoltori) (Italian Farmers Confederation) COLDIRETTI (Confederazione Nazionale Coltivatori Diretti) (National Confederation of Independent Farmers) CONFAGRICOLTURA (Confederazione Generale Agricoltura) (General Agricultural Confederation) UNACMA (Unione Nazionale Commercianti Macchine Agricole) (National Union of Agricultural Machine Dealers) UNACOMA (Unione Nazionale Costruttori Macchine Agricole) (National Union of Agricultural Machine Manufacturers) UNIMA (Unione Nazionale Imprese Meccanizzazione Agricola) (National Union of Agricultural Mechanisation Enterprises)

AND BY MEMBERS OF THE EXECUTIVE COUNCIL OF THE ENAMA, IN WHICH THE FOLLOWING ARE ALSO REPRESENTED:

MIPAF (Ministry for Agricultural and Forestry Policies) Regions and Autonomous Provinces ISMA (Istituto Sperimentale per la Meccanizzazione Agricola) (Experimental Institute for Agricultural Mechanisation)

E.NA.M.A. - ENAMA - ENTE NAZIONALE PER LA MECCANIZZAZIONE AGRICOLA (NATIONAL AGRICULTURAL MECHANISATION BODY) VIA LAZZARO SPALLANZANI, 22/A - 00161 ROME

TEL. 06/4403137-4403872 FAX 06/4403712 email: info@enama.it http://www.enama.it