I'm Aaron Graber with Ventrac and today we're going to take a look at the overview
of the boom mower and talk about what makes it so valuable as an attachment.
So first and foremost this is kind of the working structure of the unit so you've got your hydraulic
system on board of the attachment because this is a hydraulically driven head. It's a double action
cutting head too so it's very smooth and very quiet when you're running it. Boom Mower doesn't
add any any extra noise over the noise of the tractor. So a lot a lot going on here other than
these cylinders all control the actual arms of the machine. And you'll see I've got it in
an extended position now not quite all the way out but sort of representative of where it goes.
And then at the end here you've got a 39 inch cutting head. This is a sickle bar style head, so
both of these pieces move relative to each other and it slices material rather than chops it up
like a flail would. And so what it does is lays everything over really nicely. But the cool thing
about this is you can dip this into the water if you need to. And also as a side note, always run
biodegradable lube on these teeth. That way you're not contaminating whatever water features you're
working around or near. So we do that. All the work happens with this sickle head. It also can rotate
in a bunch of different directions. So it can go below grade so if you have a really steep bank
that's underneath of you, the boom head can actually rotate down. It also goes straight up
in the air and the vertical cut height is over 140 inches if you're as vertical as it can be.
So if you're trimming around Hedges or small trees I can do that as well you can reach out
and get things that really are almost exclusively hand work if you're not using equipment like this.
It's a question we get pretty frequently because it's just it kind of looks bizarre. How are you making it do
all of the different movements that it does? So we are using a dual auxiliary hydraulic and a 12
volt and then with the combination that that gives you you can control all the movements of the boom
mower. So we're always running the attachment in float. I have it on weight transfer setting
number four as well which is probably what I would recommend there's really no reason to go any less
on weight transfer. So you leave the attachment in float you can drive forward with the SDLA or with
your foot pedal, and then all of the movements of the boom mower are back on this secondary SDLA. So
when I flip the 12 volt switch I'm just going to move the key here and you can see the red light up
next to the cutter head when I flip that switch on and off you'll see the light go on and off
and when the light is on you're concentrating your movements on the head the cutter head .
So if I move this SDLA the secondary to the right that head will rotate like this clockwise
and back to the left rotate counterclockwise if I hold the green button and do the same thing
then the whole boom will translate out if I move it right and back in if I move it left. And then
if I switch back off of the red light with a 12 volt switch then that same lever will now
control the height of the boom so the boom will move up or down so down if I move to the right
up if I move to the left and then the combination of all of those movements gets you that full range
of motion. When the light is off, it's actually the same motion that you get when the whole when the
green button is held down so no matter which mode you're in that does the same thing which
is translate in and out so operationally what you want to do is basically kind of pick your
your setting based on the terrain so going around the pond when I can see that for the next 30 yards
there's a consistent grade and the angle of the pond bank is the same I'll switch to the
red light on and then I'll translate I'll rotate the head the cutting head so that it matches the
angle of that. And then I'll switch that back off and I'll only use the height and the translate
whatever angle that cutting head is set at as I move it in and out it automatically self levels
to that same matched angle it stays that way until you manually change it when you're in
situations that are like this back in all this brush next to the creek and all the things that
are more variable you have to switch back and forth a little more often with that button so
it's actually pretty intuitive once you get used to it and again your hand doesn't move from the
standard operating position that it's used to for all the rest of the attachments so there's
no extra buttons anywhere there's no extra leverage to manage it's all still on the SDLA.
The boo mower has two jack stands which is a little bit unique for our attachments. And we just use these
standard floor jacks. The reason is they let you do a really good job there's one it mounts here
when it's in the storage position and there's one on the other side. They let you do a really good
job of leveling the hitch arms, so that they're the exact right place to drive the tractor into. And so
when you unhook this thing that's where this Jack would be. This is the operation position so I've
got it connected to the tractor it stays there. But when I would want to store this I would take
this jack off, unpin it from here, put it on this section vertically, and then on the other side
I would take the Jack and move it to the lower position. And then those would support the weight
of the attachment. I would put just enough pressure on them to be carrying the weight before I would
back out of the attachment. And then obviously the inverse operation for when you want to
put everything together and actually use it. And so they they pin up so that they're out
of the way when you're actually using it. The other thing I want to point out is a couple of
the transport I guess I'll call them tricks that we have here. This piece here which I see a lot
of people ask about fixing these two notches and hooks in with this hook. This is for transport. And
what this does is it hooks over this bar right here that connects the cutter head and then it
also hooks down here. This little 90 degree hooks in on the frame, and then you pin it in.
And that link connects these two things so that this boom stays stable so that this couldn't
unfold. It's just one of those things that's kind of a nice redundancy to have for transport that
way you know that if this beam is in there then this can never unfold for any reason. The other
thing that we want to be sure to do is keep this from rotating. So this cutter head is vertical now.
Great for transport that way, and we'll put the shield over top of it so we have a cover that
goes over these knives. And just as a fail-safe for that what we can do down here on this side
is this lock out here. This is operation so when it's in this position
you're operating. You take this pin out, slide this up, and then pin it back again.
And that keeps this cylinder from moving down. And this cylinder is the one that controls that
cutter head so it keeps that cutter head locked in the in the vertical position. When this is here it
can't slide down for any reason. It's something on the tractor, if the electronics turned on, you
bump that stick, or if some connection got moved or something, it would just allow it to stay vertical
so you don't have any issues with it moving its position. So those are the two things that I get
a lot of questions on. That and this. And kind of quick explanation on jack position and how you use
that stuff to actually put the attachment on and off. So thanks for watching the video. If you have
more questions about the equipment or any other attachments, be sure to check us out at ventrac.com.
Subscribe to the YouTube channel and watch all the rest of our videos. Thanks for watching.