There are some major grass machinery companies in Ireland. TOL Engineering in Dingle in Kerry may not be on everyone’s radar but it is producing interesting pieces of agricultural equipment.

The biggest project so far is a butterfly-style mower, which was built in 2016 and put to use with local silage contractor Thomas Devane. Thomas runs the TOL Engineering mower in front of a pair of McHale Fusion 3 Plus combi balers. The balers were purchased new in 2017 replacing a pair of Fusion 2 machines.

Last year, the two balers completed more than 18,000 bales. Most of this was mowed using the locally designed and manufactured mower.

The mower started its career with Thomas at the end of the 2016 season when he ironed out any teething problems and had the machine ready to go for grass 2017.

The mower cut approximately 1,000 acres during the 2017 season.

Ease of use

Thomas said that the best thing about the mower was the ability to get through work and the ease of use that the design from TOL Engineering gave him and his mower operator.

The machine is usually operated at a forward speed of 10km/h to 12 km/h.

The mower was designed and built from scratch at TOL’s premises in Dingle. The gearbox and beds were sourced from Comer Industries.

The beds are 11ft wide with eight discs on each. When linked to a 10ft front mower, this gives a working width of 32ft. The drive to the beds is via a shaft for the central gearbox, with slip clutch in the drivetrain to protect it.

The grouper on the back of the mower is driven by orbital hydraulic motors. These are driven by the tractor’s load-sensing hydraulic system, which gives greater ability to slow-start the belts and lots of power to shift the wettest of grass.

Extra heat

With this system, there is also an oil cooler on the mower, which the oil passes through on its way back to the tractor.

This dissipates any extra heat that is added to the oil before it returns to the back end of the tractor, thus not affecting the normal working of the tractor’s hydraulic system.

The mower is powered by a 240hp John Deere 6210R, which both the manufacturer and the operator say is sufficient to drive the mower at the required speed. The mower is controlled via a control box in the cab where all the functions can be accessed in a simple three-page menu.

On the first page, you can fold up or fold down the frame to mount or dismount the machine. Once the machine is on the tractor, the butterfly motion is locked with a tidy locking mechanism. This can be released for the controller to fold the mower down to the working position. Once in the down position, there is an option to charge the accumulator to set the downward working pressure of the beds for optimal ground following ability.

Once the mower is set up, the operator can go to page two of the menu and can set the direction and speed of the grouper belts, depending on how they want to leave the grass lying.

Obviously, the grouper can also be lifted out of the way to allow for the grass to be left flat on the ground. On this page, there is also the ability to lift and drop the mower on the headland via a single button push. The third page of the menu allows the operator to turn on and off the well-positioned LED work lights.

There are three on each wing, giving great illumination for working at night. Looking around this machine, you can see that a lot of time and thought has gone into making it work and as user-friendly as possible.

So far, the operator and owner are very happy with the way the mower works and TOL Engineering is designing a front mower to complete the outfit. The front mower is expected to join the rear version during silage 2018.

On the design of the front mower, Tol Engineering has decided to do even more of the design and manufacture in-house, with the bed and gear box being designed and made in Dingle.

Over the years, TOL has made lots of one-off agricultural items from sub-soilers to full umbilical systems for local contractors.

It is currently producing a 400hp standalone hydraulic power pack for a pile driving company. It can turn its hand to anything but you can see from the fit and finish on the mowers that the company’s true love is producing well-engineered and functioning agricultural equipment.