SAFETY FRAME TESTING IN THE FIELD

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30793, 3 July 1965, Page 10

SAFETY FRAME TESTING IN THE FIELD

The New Zealand Agricultural Engineering Institute at Lincoln College is to begin testing of tractor safety frames to assess their anti-roll characteristics by actually rolling them in the field.

This modification of the originally planned testing procedure has resulted from experience with testing done so far and the viewing of a film on the rolling of tractors fitted with safety frames with

the aid of a slow motion film projector.

Professor J. R. Burton, director of the institute, said this week that a commercial test had been carried out on one frame and two more commercial tests were in progress and the Institute was also engaged in development tests in which it was assisting a Christchurch manufacturer, in the development of a new type of frame for the local market. Two more commercial safety frames were still to be tested. “In the course of doing these commercial tests we have learnt a great deal about the testing procedure and we feel fairly confident about the Swedish impact test, in which the frame is struck with a heavy pendulum, as a test of its strength, but we are not very happy with the ideas that we originally had for measuring the anti-roll characteristics of safety frames fitted with horns and that is why we will be going ahead with field rolling tests.” In the course of these rolling tests Professor Burton said it was intended to make a lot of use of slow motion movie films. When they had seen a film made by the National Agricultural Engineering Institute in England of the rolling of tractors fitted with safety frames—the New Zealand Belcher frame —with the aid of a slow motion projector they had for the first time gained a real understanding of what happened when a safety frame was rolled. A site had been chosen in the Motukarara district where the institute would be conducting rolling tests using a specially strengthened tractor. It was proposed to take slow motion films of these tests for analysis, to determine the nature of the forces that caused a tractor to roll, what it was that made an antiroll device stop a tractor from rolling, and eventualy it was hoped that out of this it would be possible to develop some useful anti-roll devices.

Professor Burton said that the institute's first workshops building .situated close to the agricultural engineering department at the college, was now well under way and he expected that it would be ready for occupation within two months.

Temporary office accommodation was also being prepared for the arrival of the institute’s senior research staff—Mr J. S. Dunn, of the horticultural research centre at Levin, who has spent a number of years at Siltsoe in Britain, is due at the institute towards the end of September, and Mr E. M. Watson, an engineer with the Rolls Royce Company in England, is due towards the end of October. Already with the institute at Lincoln are Messrs G. M. Garden, a research officer, R. J. Harwood, who is senior technician -and R. L. Scott, a technician, and Miss M. A. Guthrie, a typiste. The institute has also been building and buying equipment such as that required for the workshop and for testing safety frames, and it is also building a dark room and a soils laboratory, and acquiring equipment for these. A gift of a 35-millimetre camera has been made to the institute by the chairman of its management, Mr J. Boyd-Clark.