Keenan’s Orbital Spreader is a one-off, or as close as you get to one in the world of farm machinery. Semi-cylindrical tank, pushing rear door and a whopping flywheel at the front-end – intrigued? So were we, when we had the opportunity to see this innovative spreader in action last spring
Just four fingers are needed to count the moving parts on an Orbital Spreader. Ignoring the wheels and jack, there’s the shaft drive to the flywheel, the flywheel itself, a front slurry door and the rear pushing door. And that’s it.
The spreading principle is equally simple. A massive 1.8m diameter flywheel at the front of the machine is shut off from the muck-carrying body by a hydraulically operated slurry door. When this is opened, material feeds into the main flywheel, which rotates at 166rpm; input speed is 1,000rpm. A flywheelmounted agitator spins in the opposite direction to the flywheel, hence helping to break up any particularly fibrous material.
Out in the field, the sequence goes something like this. Switch on the pto and wait until the flywheel picks up speed. Then operate the doubleacting spool to open the front slurry door. Muck starts to fly and, to maintain material feed, the rear door pushes barrel contents up towards the front of the machine.
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