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Focusing with a wide view.

Article Excerpt
Focusing with a wide view

by Chad Elmore

Independent design firms may have the recipe for a successful launch.

Sometimes the key to a project's successful completion is not in slugging it out in-house but in asking for help.

Jim Burton, president and chairman, AgRobotics LLC, Little Rock, AR, saw precision farming methods change agriculture in the 1990s, and he thought better soil sampling methods would enhance the process. Later that decade Burton was semi-retired from 35 years of farming and started working on what would become the AutoProbe. Burton built and tested two proof-of-concept prototypes, but he wanted to enlist a team of engineers to carry the concept to the production stage.

Like many of agriculture's significant advances in machinery design, the AutoProbe is the brain-child of a farmer who knew there had to be a better way. Talking to potential customers and media-types at this year's World Ag Expo, Tulare, CA, Burton admitted independent engineering firms can bring a wealth of experience to the table on the very first meeting. For the inventor or the established manufacturer, there's no delay between concept and completion due to the time required to find and train good help.

"I love creating and building, and have always been a hands-on sort of guy," says Burton. Impressed with Diedrichs & Associates Inc.'s portfolio of agricultural equipment, he called founder Bob Diedrichs. "From the first day, that firm brought hundreds of years worth of engineering experience to the project, aided by advanced modeling programs used by major equipment manufacturers."

Burton relocated to Iowa, where he had a desk at Diedrich's Cedar Falls office for more than a year. Burton's concept was brought to virtual life with Diedrich's 3D modeling software, then a prototype machine was built in Cedar Falls. Today the prototype continues its national tour while back in Cedar Falls the design is tweaked and more machines are produced.

A high-speed, on-the-go tool for precision soil sampling, the AutoProbe is designed to be an important step in precision agriculture. Users do not have to walk the field to gather soil samples; AutoProbe does it quickly and accurately.

In its current form, the AutoProbe is pulled by a light utility vehicle that is guided and steered with GPS. Soil samples are collected by the...