How can you tell if your sprayer and its nozzles are functioning properly?
How do you identify nozzle wear before it leads to costly consequences, such as: wasting expensive agrochemicals or water from inaccurate or excessive spraying; losing time and resources on reapplications due to under-spraying; damaging or ruining crops if you’re growing, or harming the surrounding environment if you are targeting, for example, weeds?
Measuring the flow rate of nozzles at installation and at regular intervals thereafter can ensure your sprayer continues to deliver accurate, on-target spray.
So, how do you do this? Well, you could use the traditional bucket and stopwatch approach whereby you:
- Position the bucket directly under the source of the flowing liquid, ensuring the entire flow is captured.
- Start the stopwatch: Begin timing as soon as the liquid starts filling the bucket.
- Record the time: Stop the stopwatch when the bucket is completely full.
- Calculate the flow rate: Divide the volume of the bucket by the time it took to fill (in seconds) to get the flow rate in litres per second.
However, this is time consuming, messy and often inaccurate!
Or, you could take the easy way out and use a sprayer calibrator. There are a number of these on the market and their benefits include:
- Identifying nozzle tip ware and avoid chemical wastage in good time
- Crop improvement through accurate spraying
- Easy to use single handed operation
- Rapid measurement in seconds
- Compact design for portability and storage
The SC-2, made by US company Innoquest, is one such device. It offers a quick and easy way to stay on top of nozzle wear and ensure your spraying is always accurate.
Benefits of the SC-2 Sprayer Calibrator
- Fast and simple operation: Readings in about 10 seconds per tip
- No manual calculations or app download required: automatically calculates and displays tip flow rate in litres per minute, tip wear in %, and application rate in litres per hour (just enter your speed and nozzle spacing)
- Quickly identifies spray nozzle tips: Industry guidelines recommend tip replacement once flow rate exceeds that of the new tip by 10%
- Accurately measures true tip flow rate: Today’s high-tech sprayers can only be properly calibrated and confirmed with this knowledge
Watch the video below. To find out more or buy, click here.
