This invention relates generally to agricultural implements, including ground working apparatus, such as planters, and transversely elongated tool bars for supporting the ground working devices, and, more particularly, to a forwardly folding tool bar convertible between a wide, transversely extending operating configuration and a narrow, compact transport configuration.
The need to till and cultivate soil for the planting and growing of crops has been a long established practice in agriculture. More recently developed tillage implements have provided increased size and complexity to accommodate different types of crops and the tractors that tow the tillage implements to cover larger areas of soil. Increasing concerns for conservation of natural resources have also had an impact on the design of modern tillage implements, increasing the complexity of these implements. Planters of substantially equal transverse width have also been developed to work in conjunction with these tillage implements, or independently. More typically, large planting implements are operatively coupled with air carts to provide a substantial source of seed and fertilizer for the large demand accompanying such large planting implements.
Larger tillage and planting implements allow an operator to perform the required tillage operations over a larger area for each pass of the implement, permitting fuel conservation for the tractor and resulting in less compaction of the soil. The increasing levels of sophistication in tillage implements enable low-till and no-till planting techniques to be utilized with greater success. Since low-till and no-till planting techniques are preferably accomplished with a single pass of the implement over the field, the soil is disturbed only once, minimizing moisture loss and the amounts of pesticides, herbicides and fertilizer that are required. Such larger and more complex tillage implements introduce problems that have been heretofore unknown in the arts.
For example, an agricultural tractor could pull a planting implement. Adding an air cart or a seed/fertilizer supply cart to the planting implement increases the weight of the combined implement and requires the tractor and operator to be able to control all of the functions of the combined implement as the single pass is made over the field to plant seeds, place fertilizer into the ground at the proper location, and apply appropriate amounts of herbicides and/or pesticides. Furthermore, that combined implement must be transported from field to field, usually over public highways, requiring the combined implement to be converted into a transport configuration that is substantially narrower in width than the preferred operating configuration of the combined implement.
It would be desirable to provide a tool bar for a tillage or planting implement with the capability of folding from a wide, transversely extending operating position to a narrow, compact transport configuration, requiring interacting latches and actuating devices to facilitate the conversion of the tillage implement and to keep the implement in the transport configuration while being towed from one field to another.