Hello I'm Austin Jarrett from Allett Mowers. We're going to be talking today about the Allett
interchangeable cartridge range but particularly the greens and garden smaller machines. This is
the C24 and it has a little sister called the C20. The only difference is the width of the machines;
24 inches which is six hundred and ten millimetres or the C20 which is five hundred
and ten millimetres. This family of machines has interchangeable cartridges and as we all know if
you want a fantastic lawn you need to mow with a cylinder mower but there are a lot of other
tasks that you need to do in order to make a lawn really fantastic, so we'll be talking about those
cartridges later. We sell this machine mainly into bowling green's ,golf greens where they
need the versatility of a machine like this but also cricket wickets, cricket squares and this is
becoming more and more popular in just real high quality garden lawns. So, let's take a look in
more detail at the C24. So let's start at the front of the machine and that would be at the
grass box. All Allett grass boxes are rotomoulded plastic. We find that extremely robust they're
maybe not the most beautiful grass boxes in the world but what they are is extremely strong. You
can pretty much run over these with a truck and push them back into shape again. We choose with
the interchangeable cartridge mean to actually use a much larger grass box than you would expect to
see on a green mower but the reason for that is because we're doing these other tasks with the
interchangeable cartridges that we'll be picking up a lot of bulk material and rather than keep on
emptying out this light material all the time we put a bigger grass box on so that we don't spend
more time emptying out than we do scarifying or verticutting. The grass box fits easily onto
the machine and sits nests nicely up against the cylinder so that we catch absolutely everything as
its discharged from the cylinder into the grass box. When I take the grass box off it reveals
the front of the machine. We have two locations for the grass box to sit here because with the
different cartridges we need to have a different position to get the grass boxes snugly up against
the discharge point as we can. Silver at the front here is the front roller. The front roller is made
of aluminium because we're concerned about weight on greens mowing. It's a grooved roller so that we
don't roll all the grass down with the front roller before we then looking at mowing or
treating it and the height of cut on this machine is extremely precise. So we have a quick height
adjuster at each side and what we're able to do is that there is a detent in here so that as I
rotate this I actually experience just a click and a click and each click is approximately a quarter
of a millimetre. We need that accuracy because with this machine we're able to mow as low as 2.4
millimetres that's point one of an inch right the way up to about 19 millimetres so 19 millimetres
or 3/4 of an inch is the highest height of cut that we're going to get with this machine.
The actual cartridge inserts into the machine here just behind the front roller. I've got a
six-bladed cutting cartridge in here and this is great for lawns or when the grass is longer the
clip rate is about ninety three clips per metre and that will mean that it can cut long grass
and when I'm mowing at the very highest level at this with 19 millimetres (3/4 of an inch) this
cartridge will cope admirably. As I start to mow lower and the demands of wicket mowing or greens
mowing then I'm mowing much lower and I need to have a higher clip rate and I'm able to remove
this cartridge and I could put in a 10 bladed cylinder (that's another cartridge) or I have
a choice of putting a 10 bladed cylinder with a powered groomer and this space here is where
the groomer goes so that's like a verticut and as it rotates it stands the grass up right before it
goes into the 10 bladed cylinder for cutting. The whole machine is powered with a Honda engine and
there's one main reason we use Honda engines and that's because our customers love them. They're
very reliable they're very reliable to start and they're quiet it's also really easy to get a hold
of spare parts for these over the life of the machine no matter where you are in the world.
The engine sits on a 4 millimetre steel chassis and that is really robust it needs to be robust
because in order to maintain the accuracy of the machine there should be no movement in
the chassis itself. Moving to the back this is my interface between me and the mower and we try and
make these handlebars as comfortable and as easy to use in our design. From this position here I
can switch the machine on and off and I can reach easily to the pull start on the Honda engine also
the choke and the fuel on/off is just down by the side of the engine and then once the machine is
started to operate I have two bale bars. The front bale bar engages the drive to the cartridge and
then the rear bale bar feathers in the drive to the drive to the rear roller of the machine for
movement. They're also suspended and spring-loaded and the reason for that is is to make the machine
one more comfortable we're not getting the vibration of the engine in the cartridge
through to the handlebars and the other reason is the mower itself when it needs to float and
follow the contours of the ground it can do that independently of how I'm holding these handlebars.
The rear roller is made from aluminium and again that's our focus on weight in greens mowers. The
aluminium roller is split into two and that gives us the ability to put a differential into the rear
roller so that the mower engine drives the roller but it drives each side independently. That allows
us to turn at the end and the rollers can choose their own independent speeds without scuffing the
turf but also it gives great straight lining as the machine is always driven true. There is a
wire scraper on the rear roller in case you're picking up worm casts and that just helps keep
the roller clean and of course that's important when we're mowing very accurately our height have
cut that that roller doesn't need any debris sticking to it otherwise that will self adjust
the height for us which isn't ideal. When you choosing which Allett mower to buy the main
reason you're gonna buy the C-range is because you want to do all these other tasks all from the
same machine. The chassis is extremely accurate because it needs to be for the precision of the
mowing that we're doing but you gain all of those advantages when you put a verticut for instance in
of accuracy and easy adjustment and what is actually a very quick machine. So to remove
the cartridge it's quite simple I switch the engine off make sure that that's all disabled,
I use the rear kickstand to pull the machine up so the weight is sitting at the back of the
machine when I remove the cartridge the front becomes light if I didn't do that the machine
with tip backwards. I have a small hand wheel at the side here I'm just going to wind this
out. This actually retains the cartridge within the machine. I then just slide the cartridge to
disengage it from the drive and then once I've done that the cartridge is free to be removed.
I then choose the cartridge which I want to put in and I just need to sit that on some rails within
the machine and then line up the drive coupling and there's a couple of little markers on this
that just make that easy and then I can slide the cartridge into the drive and then put the
knob back into place again and that cartridge is now absolutely locked tight within the chassis
there's no movement whatsoever and it's as simple as that. I'm going to talk briefly about some of
the cartridges that you have. You don't have to buy all the cartridges at once when you select an
Allett C range machine you choose which power unit you want based on width and then you choose the
cartridges that you want to go into the machine. So if I just tip this one back we've just changed
this cartridge and this is the turf rake cartridge this is one of my favourites. It is for removing
loose material so it will remove thatch it will comb the sward upright and as this rotates you
can see these little spring tine fingers here and they're very closely spaced together so it's also
really good for picking up leaves pine needles and general debris off sports surfaces which is
so important. I have the turf rake cartridge in the C24 and I just wanted to show you the type of
material that's coming out of there . This lawn is actually only a year old and already it's starting
to build up that just like any healthy lawn will do and this is the sort of brown material that
I'm actually fetching out with this. It's a very gentle cartridge it's summer-time and you don't
normally do cultivations in summertime but I am getting a large thatch buildup and of
course it stops soaks up my irrigation water so I thought that I'd give it a good combing and
get this material out and that's exactly what this cartridge does. It's ever so effective it's really
quick and easy to use as well especially in this machine it's works at a really good walking pace
so it's gentle you can't actually see where the machine's been that lawn just looks striped up
like it would do normally. I have a selection of our cartridges here but not all of them but just
wanted to give you an idea of what it is. Please check our website out at www.allett.co.uk to find
the latest range of cartridges we have available for the model of machine that's most suitable to
you. We keep coming up with new ideas and new ways of maintaining your turf and trying to create less
and less damage but more disturbance. This is the slitter cartridge it very simply doesn't
have a drive on this this cartridge but as you drive forward these little spikes go into the
ground and create slits it will help break down the thatch and it will also help if you use it
during the summer to allow the irrigation water to go down through the thatch into the soil and
the hopefully encouraging the roots to go more deeply. This is a scarifier cartridge one of our
most aggressive cartridges really for spring time and autumn use . It has a hook blade it'll go sub
six millimetres deep into the sward it will remove a lot of material and it will also remove plants
and thin plants out so you must only be using this when the plants are growing vigorously so they can
recover and don't forget to put fertiliser on after you've used. The verticut is slightly more
gentle but more intense, closer blade spacing and again the verticut as it suggests is making
vertical cuts into the sward cut rhizomes and to encourage new growth. It does also remove
material and flows that material into the grass box as we discussed earlier. The brush brush is
great for picking up debris off the surface but also you can use this brush to brush in
top dressing and make sure the top dressing goes deeper into the sward without getting in the way
of your cylinder mower blades when you come to mow afterwards bludgeoning the blades and then
we've already talked about the cylinder cartridges there are three options available at this time;
six bladed, ten bladed and ten bladed with powered groomer. So I hope that gives you a
better understanding of what the C-Range the cartridge range from Allett can do for you.
Interchangeable cartridges just absolutely essential if you want one machine that is
a system to maintain bowling green's, cricket wickets, croquet lawns, tennis courts or even
if you're just the most aspirational gardener that want's the most perfect lawn then this is
the machine for you. It's really handy to be able to take these cartridges out change them,
hang them on the wall or even if you just want to take a cartridge out for maintenance it's
just so easy please visit our website for more information and catch the latest developments in
our cartridge range. Thanks ever so much for listening see the web site www.allett.co.uk