|
Others are going to know a lot more than me, I have a JD finger pickup (JD 7000). JD came out with the 1200 series planters, which had some sort of singulation system. I would assume an early version of the 7000 system. Never looked inside of one. The finger pickup has a vertical wheel with little fingers on it, they clamp & release. They clamp on a kernal of corn, rotate to the other side then release it to drop down the seed tube. Can dump any size seed in the hopper, & within reason it will plant the same population you set, and no need to change plates, or get the same size seed. Don't need to clean out the boxes if you change seed size.... The air planters use a drum with holes in it to pick up seed - they stick to the hole - then the seed can be blown down a tube to the row unit. These took a while to get right, IHC the 400, 500 series didn't do so well, the 800/900 was ok, took unitl the 1200 series until they got seed spacing and all to work pretty good. I'm not so familiar..... AC has an early air system, White still has a very popular air system that worked better sooner than CaseIH version. JD also now does some air, starting with the 7200 series of planters. They do take a lot of air, quite a fan, so you need a pto pump or a good hyd output on your tractor to run the fan. It is another thing to go wrong. But it works good on a bigger & bigger planter, so is the future of planters. It is very hard to beat a JD 7000 finger planter for accuracy. Each row does take a little matinence, so if you get to a 24 row planter, the air planter with the central system is easier - more complicated, but only 1 real complicated part rather than 24 semi-complicated.... ;) Nothing wrong with a plate planter either, just have to fuss with all those different plates for different sized seed. These days the seed companies are perhaps not so fussy with grading seed corn, as there are fewer plate planters out there.... --->Paul
| 
