Dondi: whole gamut tillage, and more
Whatever your problem in tillage, working the soil or many other tasks, it's worth wondering what the Umbrian company Dondi has to offer.
The company's products for farmers range from sub-soilers to multi-tine cultivators, minimum tillage chisels and a new cultivator baptised the Speedplow, but they also include ditchers, post-hole drills, rear scrapers and raid maintenance machinery.
Designed to replace ploughing, the sub-soilers can work down to a depth of 50-60 cm. The digging teeth are angled at 32-45°, the optimal digging angle to optimise rapid and easy soil penetration and ensure improved sod turning so that surface residue is covered.
The accessories include rear rollers to break up the topsoil and leave a well-levelled surface. As for its rippers, Dondi says the tilling its machines produce improve drainage significantly with easy runoff for rainwater and improved subsoil humidity in dry periods.
The company has multi-tine cultivators for working down to 25-w35 cm, combined with front mounted disks to bury surface residues and rear mounted finishing accessories.
These devices can be tractor mounted or towed and provide a speedy work rate, low fuel consumption and reduced maintenance. They give a complete reworking of the soil, proper surface levelling and effective finishing, whether the rear units are disk or rollers.
The Speedplow, designed to work at medium depths (20-25 cm), decompacts the soil fully by mixing it with tillage residues. The double-row set of the rear-mounted undulated discs ensures excellent soil crushing and very good levelling. In many cases, the soil is already ready for the subsequent sowing stage.
The Speedplow is used to break up the soil and prepare it to sow second crops or to prepare the land for spring sowing. The machine can execute quick tillage up to 10-12 km/h, thereby considerably reducing working time with noticeable energy savings. Accessories are available to cut and bury crop residues.
R&D staff at Dondi's factory at Bastia Umbria near Perugia have also designed machinery for minimum tillage down to 8-15 cm: independently mounted disks with shock absorbers, coupled with front tines and rear rollers, all easily attached to the three-point hitch and tested to improve penetration in the most difficult terrain.
Like other Dondi cultivators and similar machinery, the precise angle of the cutting tool is crucial in operating speed and quality. The quick burial of residues from previous crops opens the way for immediate, or at least very quick new sowing, an objective exemplified in the name of the Speedplow.
