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Noah Newman:

Hello and welcome to another installment of the Precision Farming Dealer podcast, brought to you by Ag Express contributing editor Dan Dan Crummett talks with Ladd McCluskey and Kurt Kamin of Latitude Ag about the company's Merlin IC system, what they call an industry changing sprayer innovation. Dan Crummett, take it away.

Dan Crummett:

Hello, I'm Dan Crummett, contributing editor for Farm Equipment Magazine here today with Kurt Cayman and Ladd McCluskey, co-partners in Latitude Ag. Over the past several years, the company has been developing a boom section injection system for ag sprayers that it offers an improved variable rate application accuracy and makes the end of the day sprayer clean out much easier. This RV2 boom section injection and recirculation system just went commercial and I'm sure growers will be hearing a lot more about it this season. Kurt, Ladd, thanks for being here with us today. Can you explain basically how the system works and the benefits it offers operators throughout the day and at the end of the day?

Ladd McCluskey:

Yeah, so basically what we've developed here is a boom level recirculation system. What's important about that is to note that it doesn't dump back into the tank. So because of that, we also have an injection system that allows you to inject directly into the boom and then it keeps your chemical carrier mix on the boom itself and you don't dilute your chemical by dumping it into the tank. So we have a boom level recirculation system that is also in a direct inject system. That's the real 30,000 foot overview of what we've created here.

Dan Crummett:

Now are you using pumps to do that?

Ladd McCluskey:

So yeah, we use an injection. We're using an injection pump, which is a pretty straightforward, simple process. So we're pumping the injection. However, what we've done for the recirculation is we have developed a valve that whenever you're spraying will automatically draw pressure or there creates a pressure drop. So we draw from the ends of the sections, so we put a sweep on the ends of the sections or 180 degree turn, and then we have a couple pound pressure drop across the sections. And so whatever doesn't get sprayed out, gets pulled back up and gets mixed back in after the injection port. So your percent composition is exactly the same to what's coming back around. And that one we've had on a sprayer for what, three years now, Kurt, the recirculation side?

Kurt Kamin:

Yep, yep.

Ladd McCluskey:

Yeah, so we've had that out field-testing for about three years and that boom is absolutely spotless. So there's no condensate, there's no precipitation, no nothing. We've eliminated all the dead ends. We've gone through and reduced the number of threads and the number of fittings so that we don't have hardly any place for chemical to hide. And then that allows us to give you a nice clean boom at the end of the day.

Dan Crummett:

Okay. You've touched on it. I would like you to walk us through the clean water tank and the main pump all the way back to the nozzles, if you would, the components that are included. And what does a unit like this look like? Just explain step by step from clean water to application to the canopy.

Kurt Kamin:

I'll take that, Ladd, if you want.

Ladd McCluskey:

Yep.

Kurt Kamin:

So basically our system is an add-on system. So the customer, whether he wants to run a product in his tank or whether he wants to just simply inject into the system that's his call. And with a closed loop recirculating section, each section on the sprayer is basically a closed loop racetrack, if you will. So when the fluid gets in, whatever isn't used by the nozzle tips comes floating back around. And that's where at that point is where we inject the chemicals. So if the customer wants to inject on the go, this will be the first time in the industry he'll actually be able to hit the button and fill the whole boom at once without that V pattern developing because of the latency and filling the boom, which with our next generation software will be programmable with field scouting.

But basically once the fluid comes out of the tank, it goes into the section of the spray boom like it normally would. Everything is controlled from the operators just like he was normally spraying. And if he wants to inject at that point, he simply turns on our machine, our system, and then each section is treated like its own little sprayer if you will. So we monitor the fluid with an ultrasonic flow meter of the carrier coming into the section, whether it's blended with a chemical or not. And then we also use an ultrasonic flow meter to inject chemical into that section to monitor it for accuracy. So that gives you the variability to do whatever you want with each section. And it also gives you the ability to be far more precise than what the current systems are in the industry. With the current offerings in the industry for chemical injection is basically it all gets injected back towards the tank and it takes forever for the system to charge where ours charges instantly.

And conversely, if there's only six gallons of product mixed up at any one time in the boom itself on 120 foot boom, that expedites the clean-out process. So to clean out the sprayer, you don't even have to get out of the sprayer, you just hit a button and it automatically cleans out the sprayer and then you can switch over chemicals or you can go from one chemical to another. And we've done the testing, it takes about three and a half minutes to get your sections cleaned out completely. So instead of spending an hour and pulling filters and flush valves and repetitively dumping fluid on the ground to clean out your system and dealing with the rinse aid aspect, with our system, you simply turn the ejection system off and run clean water through your system for three minutes and you're done.

Dan Crummett:

And that does what a triple rinse would do, I take it?

Kurt Kamin:

Yep. We've done the testing with Dr. Tom Wolf out of Saskatoon Canada, and basically it took three minutes and 15 seconds to get from total concentration to 20,000 to one, which is the standard in the industry for being cleaned out, which is impressive. The ROI on that is going to be very impressive when you could switch five chemicals in a day and only eat up a few minutes to do it. Whereas if you're doing it manually the way it's done right now, it would take you several hours to do that. And the other aspect is with the current recirculation systems in the industry, everybody's sending it back to the main supply tank, which basically eliminates the ability to inject chemicals. You can't do the two at the same time, whereas with our system we can, because nothing goes back to the tank. Once that blended chemical, with or without chemical coming out of the carrier out of the main tank, once it hits that section, it never leaves. The only way it comes out of that is to spray it out through the nozzle tips of that section.

Dan Crummett:

You mentioned further development being reactive to field maps and that sort of thing. Explain a little bit about where that's going.

Kurt Kamin:

Yeah, that's exciting basically because now we have the ability to turn a chemical ejection system on on the go. In other words, the whole boom charges at once. There'll be a little lag time, which we have some testing to do on yet. It may take a second or a second and a half, but basically the whole boom would charge, so it's going to expedite the whole process as far as being able to spray in the field. So our next generation of software then will have scouting app that you can use either on your iPhone or your iPad or whatever, however you want to do it.

And basically your scout can go out and we'll be able to map the field and say the outside of the field has a pesticide issue, the inside of the field does not. So let's turn the injection system on when we get to the end of the field and leave it on when we turn around and when we get a hundred feet into the field, it'll automatically shut off whatever the app is written, however the field is configured as far as the scout or the operator can do that himself.

So we're excited about that. That's going to be the first time in the industry that will be able to do prescriptions per se. And then that software also will enable customers to use those for pseudo spray records as well as inventory control and management of a co-op with 10 sprayers could effectively pull up on their computer in the office and tell exactly where each sprayer is, how far across the field it is, how much longer it's going to take. So the management aspect of it to expedite the co-op's ability to get more spraying done at the end of the day is our focus.

Ladd McCluskey:

And I think just to add one more thing to that is right now a lot of people are a little hesitant when they hear injection system. We've heard that from quite a few people, that the injection system is, I've got to just start it and then I'm just hoping it all works and I'm just, I got to depend on some other system. Whereas if you just tank mix, you physically see yourself dump the chemical in the tank or connect it. Well, what we've decided to, or what we did with this is to make sure that it was giving you instant feedback is like Kurt mentioned earlier, we utilize an ultrasonic flow meter on the chemical itself. And so when we do that, we also GPS and timestamp that. So if you can imagine every time you're injecting and that flow meter changes, it throws a time and GPS location stamp on there.

And so you can come back after the fact and you can look at a field. So let's say somebody calls and you're a co-op and somebody complains, says, "Hey, it was too windy and you sprayed too much chemical and it killed blah, blah, blah," and you can take it and "Go, well, on this day, on this field put the prescribed rate is 21 ounces per acre. We were putting a rate of 21 ounces per acre on, we were traveling at this rate, we had this much carrier flow, we had this," so you can determine your droplet size.

For the first time we're really looking at data, farming with data and the sprayer, because I kind of equate it to this: today, you get a brand new sprayer and it's like buying a new car except for it only has crank windows because you're still looking at 30 year old technology that's out there that's pushing these systems. And we wanted to change that and that's kind of where we've come from. So to answer that question about the business end or how it works, that's really, it will be very, very advanced with time. GPS, we've talked about putting. Air speed, wind speed, all that kind of stuff. And we've already built, the system has already been built for that. We just have to continue on with the software.

Noah Newman:

Let's burn a quick timeout and hear a message from our sponsor, AG Express.

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Dan Crummett:

When would you be looking at this system being operational?

Kurt Kamin:

We're going to have a couple systems running around this summer. Again, we want to do some proofing and everything, but our goal is to, some time later this winter or early next spring, probably January or February sometime of actually retail marketing it. And we want to make sure that everything is right and the software basically to make it function at this point is done, but we just want to add the bells and the whistles and do the testing and to make sure that everybody's going to be happy with the product when it hits the field.

Dan Crummett:

That's some exciting technology. You had demonstrations this past fall. What was the grower reaction to that or applicator or reaction to that?

Kurt Kamin:

People are extremely impressed. One of the bad things, I think Ladd mentioned that was the current injection technology in the industry is so outdated. Everything else is kept up. They've put on PWM systems, they've put [inaudible 00:13:43] stats and sprayers. The technology has kept up and that now they realize the need for recirculation, which basically if you're sending it back to the tank, the end result is you basically just pre-charge the boom. Well, our system does the same thing. The only difference between ours and theirs is ours will clean out in three minutes and theirs, it takes an hour to do a good job of actually cleaning a sprayer out.

There's some hesitancy because of the age-old technology that went out there. When they came out with them in the eighties, a lot of those systems were in for a year and they pulled them off and didn't like them. That's because quite frankly, they didn't have the technology available to them like we do now. Everything was running in the analog state and they had too hard of a time controlling the chemicals and making sure that basically everything worked properly. And the technology's come so far now. Just the ultrasonic flow meter is one of the tools that has enabled us to go forward with this because we don't have to recalibrate with temperature. We don't have to recalibrate with viscosities of chemicals.

The whole process is we know exactly what's happening. We have no parts wearing inside the system as far as that goes. And the chemical itself that is injected to each section, it's independent. There's a charged manifold on the modular injection system, and coming off of that manifold then is a line going to each section with a wire to monitor the ultrasonic floor meter. But the line going to that section then controls the chemical going to that section. So we're not injecting into the whole system. We're injecting at the section level, which is going to give you a better accuracy. It's going to give you more flexibility.

If you have a weed infestation on the outside of the field and you want to increase your rate, that option is available. Another unique feature of our product is because we monitor each section continuously, we compare those, the carrier coming into the section, and then that allows us to be able to let you know that you have a section that is either underperforming or over-performing in that you have a plug spray tip, a partially plug tip or a leak in the system per se.

A lot of these rear mount sprayers, you're at the Almighty's mercy to know whether the thing's even spraying or not. You have no sight of it, you can't see it. The front mounts are a little different, but even a front mount with a semi plug tip, it can be hard to see while you're spraying. There's a lot to watch. And so you'll get an alarm, which will tell you that section number two has got a plug tip, which should be a huge benefit. I came from the sprayer world, so I've done a lot of spraying and eventually it catches up with everybody. Sooner or later you get a plugged tip and...

Dan Crummett:

Well, this seems like an epiphany type product at the time when variable rate technology is really catching on and as an applicator or an end user wants to incorporate this system, how do they do it? How is it packaged, how do you sell it? What's the installation like, that sort of thing. We've only got about four minutes here, so I'd like to end up with that.

Ladd McCluskey:

Yeah, let me jump on that one real quick. So what we wanted to do was we wanted to make sure that it was as simple of a system as possible. And so basically, for each section, you have a valve that needs to be attached. That valve contains all of the, it basically is about 50 some pipe fittings and about three new invented parts that are all together in one piece. So you take a banjo fitting, a one-inch banjo or a two-inch banjo or an NPT pipe thread; whatever connects your main pipe to your section. You pull it apart, you put this valve in place, you put it back together and you have one set of wires that runs to that, to the flow meter and your boom is done. And then you take off the end of each section, you put on a sweep, 180 degrees sweep and two small pipes that go back or tubes that go back to that valve. And now your recirculation system is done and it acts as a passive recirculation system.

So we don't care if you want to inject or not. So you can go out and you can spray your whole entire field without injection and never turn our system on. And it works exactly like it does today. And that's the real beauty of this. The other part of this is a modular injection module. I guess you don't need modular twice, but an injection module. And it is something that you hang on your sprayer, it has a tank above it, a pump, the manifold and it has two electrical connections that come off it. One goes to the boom end and one goes to the power end and you're done. And so we figured the total, if you have two people working on it, you could probably install the whole entire system in three to four hours and you're off running.

Dan Crummett:

What are we looking at as far as relative cost?

Ladd McCluskey:

So that's something that we're still working on. I would love to give you a cost, but as of right now, we're still working on it because we don't have any mass quantity purchases in place. And that's really the contributing factor is if we can get them, if we can buy all the hose clamps we need and all the brackets we need and all the frames we need, it's going to cut our costs down significantly. And so then we'll be able to sell it at a much less rate too.

Dan Crummett:

Okay. You have some excellent online video of essentially explaining this system. Can you tell our listeners a website for that?

Ladd McCluskey:

Yeah, I can. It's Latitude and it's L-A-T-I-T-U-D-E and then a dash and then Ag.com. So latitude-ag.com. And there's an animated video on there, and within the next week, we should have an actual video. We have other videos that are on YouTube right now, but we're going to go through and put together an actual video of a small scale version of this sprayer working and we'll show you how it injects and show you how fast it charges and all that kind of stuff.

Dan Crummett:

Very good. Well, Kurt and Ladd, it's been a pleasure visiting with you about a significant, I'm sure, advance in sprayer technology. Thank you for your time, and I'll let you both get back to making a living.

Kurt Kamin:

All right. Thanks, Dan.

Dan Crummett:

Thank you.

Kurt Kamin:

Appreciate it.

Noah Newman:

Great stuff there. From Dan [inaudible 00:21:03], Ladd McCluskey, and Kurt Kamin. Thanks once again to our sponsor, AG Express Electronics. Remember, Ag Express has a solution for nearly any operation, whether planting, harvesting, chemical application or hay bailing.

Thank you once again for tuning in. My name's Noah Newman. Until next time, for all things Precision Farming Dealer related, check out PrecisionFarmingDealer.com. Have a great day.