How to make a potato digger for a walk-behind tractor with your own hands?
People living in rural areas and summer residents harvest potatoes every year. This process is quite time consuming, especially if you are doing manual cleaning. To simplify the collection of potatoes, many purchase special potato diggers for walk-behind tractors. However, some owners refuse such a purchase and try to make such a design on their own. However, before the do-it-yourself potato digger is made, it is necessary to familiarize yourself with the types of diggers and the peculiarities of their manufacture.
Appointment
Before you create a potato digger, you need to study in more detail, this tool is used for it. This attachment should be used together with a walk-behind tractor. It is used for digging up potatoes and digging land in fields and household plots.
The main function of the potato digger is to separate the tubers from the soil and lay them on the ground. That is why many vegetable growers and farmers buy or make their own such devices before harvesting.
Varieties
Any potato digger for a mini tractor is made for loosening the earth and digging potato tubers onto its surface. However, despite the fact that all potato diggers for a walk-behind tractor perform the same function, such designs may still differ. There are several types of diggers that you can make yourself or purchase from a store.
Vibrating or Rumbling
The crumbling potato digger is made of a vibrating sieve and a ploughshare. The vibrating product has a fairly simple principle of operation. During operation, the digger is placed in the soil and gradually removes the ripe tubers from there. Together with the soil, they fall on a sieve to shake off unnecessary soil. Such a potato digger has a serious drawback - it is very difficult to do it yourself.
Simple or fan
Such a fan potato digger for a mini tractor has the simplest design. It is made from a plow to which you need to attach several arrows. During harvesting with a motor-cultivator with a simple digger installed, the plow will go deep into the ground and the dug tubers will begin to rise along its rods. The advantages of this digger include its versatility. It can be installed on any model of motoblocks and mini tractors.
Transport
The transport-type potato digger is perfect for motoblocks of such a model as "Neva" and therefore it is necessary to use it with them. The design of such a digger is very simple and consists only of a mobile conveyor and a share. The conveyor has a special hook that holds the tubers and helps to separate them from the ground. The transport digger for potatoes should only be used in areas with heavy soil, since this model does not dig out tubers well from soil with a low degree of density.
How to make a potato digger with your own hands
Before you make a potato digger for a walk-behind tractor with your own hands, you need to read the instructions for making such products. First, you should familiarize yourself with the list of tools that will come in handy for creating a manual potato digger. To make a homemade potato digger you will need:
- nuts with bolts;
- reinforced rods;
- iron plate;
- engraver;
- welding;
- Bulgarian;
- metal corners.
Frame creation
The basis of the homemade product for a walk-behind tractor or a tractor is the frame of a potato digger. To make a quality frame, you need to familiarize yourself with the basic steps of its creation.
Fastening rectangle welding
The fixing rectangle forms the frame of the entire device and therefore must be done very carefully. To make the frame, you will need a square iron pipe at least four meters long and about 50 cm wide. It is cut into four different parts, two of which should be 100–120 cm long, and the rest 80–90 cm. All cut pipes are welded in this way to create a rectangular design. After welding, hand sanding of the edges should be done to remove sharp corners.
Jumper attachment
The potato digger for the walk-behind tractor must adjust its tilt level, and it is for this that a jumper is installed to mount special rods. It is mounted in the center of a rectangular frame. On the opposite side, two small pipes with a length of no more than 10 cm and a diameter of 25 mm are installed. The tubes are mounted to the frame so that wheels can be attached to them in the future. They are installed from the outside of the frame in one of its corners. After attaching the pipes, small holes with a diameter of 10-15 mm are made in each of them with a drill.
Installation of vertical racks
In order for a do-it-yourself potato digger for a walk-behind tractor to have a more reliable frame, several vertical racks will have to be attached to the frame. First, you need to retreat from the lintel 5-10 cm along the frame and weld a small metal square 35x35 cm perpendicular to it. Then you need to retreat 15 cm from it and attach iron racks 30-35 cm long. As a result, the finished structure should look like an inverted staircase.
Rack connection
The final stage in creating the frame of which the potato digger for the tractor will consist is connecting the edges of the posts. For this, it is recommended to use 0.5 mm metal strips. Each of these strips is welded to the posts at an angle of 45 degrees, after which their edges should be joined together. The finished structure will be in the shape of a triangle.
Ralo and pitched board
Once you're done with the frame, you can start creating the pitched board and the rallying. These made parts of the potato digger for the walk-behind tractor are used to dig out tubers from the soil and clear them from the ground. For an inexperienced tractor driver and gardener, creating such elements can seem like a very difficult job. Therefore, before getting down to business, you need to familiarize yourself with the peculiarities of their manufacture.
Rala welding
To create this element with your own hands, you will need to make two small holes in a small iron sheet with dimensions of 30x30 cm for installing M12 bolts. They will also have to be done in each of the racks at a distance of about 45 cm from the bottom. When all the holes are prepared, you can screw on the metal sheet.
Then, on the opposite side, place another iron sheet. In this case, metal is used with dimensions of 60x30 cm and a thickness of 0.5 mm. In the center of the attached sheet, you need to hit it well with a sledgehammer 2-3 times to form a cone.
Pitched board welding
A device for digging potatoes must necessarily have a pitched board and therefore, after welding the ral, it is necessary to start making it. To create a pitched board, you need to prepare one twig with a diameter of 10-15 mm and a length of about one meter. One edge of it is welded to the newly created ral, and the second should go beyond the base of the potato digger for the walk-behind tractor.
There are times when the welded twig begins to wobble strongly and you have to create additional support for it. To do this, a riser 25-30 cm long is welded at the end of the frame. Then a square pipe is attached to the riser, to which three rods will have to be welded to ensure additional stability of the structure.
Installation of adjusting rods
A homemade potato digger for a walk-behind tractor must be equipped with adjusting rods. They are installed so that in the future you can independently adjust the slope of each installed rod. They must be mounted to the first cross member on the product frame. To reduce the angle of inclination, the installed rod will have to be unscrewed so that its rods begin to protrude. To increase the angle, you will have to screw the rods back.
Wheel mounting
In order for the potato digger attached to the walk-behind tractor to move around the site better, it is necessary to install several wheels on it. To do this, you can use any wheels from wheelbarrows, the carrying capacity of which should not exceed one hundred kilograms. A fastener must be welded to each wheel and installed to the potato digger.
Conclusion
Digging potatoes every gardener is engaged in growing vegetables on his site. It is quite difficult to do this manually, and therefore many use special potato diggers for walk-behind tractors. To create such a structure yourself, you need to familiarize yourself with the step-by-step instructions for making diggers.
