Hello my name is Austin Jarrett from Allett Mowers. Today I'd like to show you the Allett
Tournament mowers. The Tournament mower is for people that demand precision mowing especially
at very low heights of cut. The Tournament will mow as low as 2.4 millimetres and as high as 19
millimetres that's point one of an inch through to three-quarters of an inch so very low but this is
for people that have very precise requirements so people will be looking at this type of mower will
be golf greenkeepers, people wanting to produce a green maybe in their garden but also cricket
wickets and croquet lawns. Tennis clubs would also look at this for lawn tennis courts. I'm going to
talk you through the mower and I'm going to start right at the very front so we have a plastic
moulded grass box which is extremely tough and durable it's shaped very tightly and fits right
into the cylinder aperture in order to catch as many blades of grass of a cut as possible. It is
small but then in a golf green keeping situation or in a bowling green we are able to stop throwing
to the grass box quite regularly and actually we don't want you to fill the grass box up with too
much grass because if that becomes heavy then it puts more weight on the front roller which will
mean that you'll change your height of cut if you get the grass box too full so we do keep it
compact deliberately. It easily lifts on and off and you see I have some grass clippings here and
the clippings we're talking here are almost grass shavings because we're not cutting off more than
a third of the plant at any one time and on this cricket wicket I'm mowing at my three millimetres
which is very close to my minimum height of cut. The foot roller is aluminium because weight is
absolutely critical this is the 20 inch Tournament and we also have a 24 inch wide machine too.
We have grooves on the front roller and we also have a scraper in order to keep that clean because
if we don't then that will change the height of cut. You can see just behind there there
is a groomer; the groomer rotates in the same direction as you'd expect a wheel to travel and
what that does is the grass that is laid down by the front roller is then combed back upright ready
to present it to the bottom blade of the mowing system. This ensures that we can get the grass
standing as upright as possible before we mow it. The cylinder in this is a 10 bladed cylinder and
the bottom blade is a very slim bottom blade to allow us to be able to cut so low. The ten bladed
cylinder gives a very high clip rate at 244 clips per metre so you don't see any washboarding on a
mower of this type when it's mowing grass even as low as the 2.4 millimetres that we're able
to achieve. The grass is ejected very cleanly and at high velocity into the grass box make sure that
we get everything into the grass box. Critically on this machine because the height of cut is so
critical we have micro adjust here and 0.3 of a millimetre per click I can just simply turn this
either clockwise or anti-clockwise and that click will give me that very small incremental change
in my height of cut. I can't the clicks on both sides then I can just make very small variations
for my required height of cut. The groomer which is combing the grass upright is independently
adjusted and I would normally set that anywhere between one and three millimetres below my height
of cut so that it's just reaching into the grass plants and combing them upright without doing
any verticutting or scarifying and that's not the purpose of the groomer on this mower. Light weight
is critical and although the machine is very strong and robust we lose use light materials
wherever we can and for example the rear roller is constructed of aluminium it is also split which
gives us a differential and that differential drive allows us to turn and straight line very
easily while delivering the tractive power to that rear roller. There is a scraper on the rear
roller too. We use Honda engines that customers love this engine it's extremely reliable spare
parts are very easily available wherever you are around the world and in particular it has a great
starting ability. This mower is going to last you a long time doing what it does and we need
the engine to match that longevity so that's why we choose Honda engines. Everyone's very familiar
with them and it's easy to find service service personnel to be able to maintain it for you. The
handlebar control is important it is the interface between the machine and the user and we try and
keep it as simple as we possibly can there's a front bale bar which when we pull that in sends
the drive to the cylinder to start cutting and then the rear roller drive isn't is engaged from
the rear bale bar. The groomer on this machine because it rotates could cause damage to the
grass so what we've done is cleverly connect the groomer drive to the rear roller drive so the
drive to the groomer only engages when you start moving so that you don't leave a cultivated trench
if you were to engage the groomer drive while the machine was standing still. The handlebars you can
see float which allows the machine to float and follow the ground contours independent of the
operator and that also isolates the machine from the operator from a vibration point of view so
we get low hand arm vibration figures in order to avoid a vibration white finger. From here I
can adjust the throttle and that's how I choose my speed that I'm going to operate at and I also
have a hand brake as well to prevent the machine from rolling away while I'm emptying my grass box.
I'm going to show you the mower working now on this cricket wicket that has very
specific requirements. We don't stripe a cricket wicket we mow in two directions in
order to make sure that we get as much of the grass at the same height as possible.
While I can adjust the groomers very easily by using the two knobs on the top of the machine
here I can just like completely independently of the height of cut if I decide for whatever
reason that it might be just too dry to be using the powered groomer today I don't have to readjust
the groomer what I'm able to do is just pull the groomer out of work I simply turn these
two knobs here and that allows me then to pull up the groomer and then I can tighten that back
up again that lifts the groomer ten millimetres out of work so it doesn't groom the grass at all.
So that was a brief introduction to the Allett Tournament. The Allett Tournament
20 but remember there's a 24 inch version as well. This mower is for very fine cutting of
very low heights if you need to know more about these mowers please visit
our website at www.allett.co.uk. Thanks very much for listening.