The greatest obstacle to do-all planters is engineering a metering system versatile enough to handle elongated corn seed, round soybeans and all the other sizes and shapes of seeds. Everybody has an idea to get it done, but no one has proved they can do it-yet. Great Plains Manufacturing may be as far along as anyone in the search for the perfectly versatile metering system. It uses changeable metering wheels with cells of different shapes for different seeds. So far, the Precision Seeding System has proved itself with soybeans, small grains and rice.
Rounds are pretty well under control, but flats are another story.
As a result, Great Plains engineers are still tweaking the shapes of holes on the singulating wheels to accept all types of seed corn. Cotton, too, is a challenge, Evans says. ASM doesn't have the seed pockets that characterize most meters. Instead, vacuum pressure holds seed to a flat-sided disk before it is deposited in the seed tube. So far, Case IH engineers have not been able to make the principle work well with wheat.