Product Description

Wilger Electronic Flowmeter | 20580-00

Wilger’s Electronic Flow Monitoring System and Electronic Flowmeter are built from the ground up for consistency and dependability on the farm.

With an easily serviceable flowmeter and simple flow monitoring system app, it allows custom threshold monitoring for blockage and any rate irregularity.

The flowmeter becomes necessity with the importance of a consistent fertilizer or chemical application, which are plagued by blocked lines, incorrect orifices, blown product hoses, micro-dosing, and chemicals that are too dark to visually monitor. (E.g. humic acid (coffee black), Paralign™ Fertilizer (blood red), Copper mixes, etc.)

The system goes far beyond what a visual flow indicator system can provide, giving the actual flow row-by-row, instead of relying on pressure gauges, visual flow indicators or a single system flowmeter.

The EFM system can simply be retro-fitted to existing visual flow indicator assemblies, simply being added in-line with the common O-ring Seal (ORS) connections.

Example Screen of the Electronic Flow Monitoring System App (v2.6) monitoring three different products being applied simultaneously on the same piece of equipment

Material Specifications:

• Max Operating Pressure: 100 PSI (7BAR)
• Max Operating Flow Rate: Up to 1.5 us gpm (for standard flow bodies)
• Max Operating Temperature: 185°F / 85°C
• O-ring Seal Materials: FKM or VITON®
• U-clip Material: Stainless Steel
• ORS Fitting Material Glass-reinforced Polypropylene
• Flow Meter Body Material: TPX (Polymethylpentene). TPX Compatibility – plastic compatibility guide is not developed by Wilger, and cannot be guaranteed for accuracy

EFM Metering Orifice and Jet Calculator

With the electronic flowmeter, there are four jets that are included in a #20580-00 flowmeter kit. These colored jets stabilize the flow across the paddlewheel within the flowmeter, allowing much more accurate and consistent flow readings. It is important to make a compatible jet is used in an application, such that it doesn’t become a restricting factor in applying the full rate of product. There are tools and charts available to make sure you use the best jet for your application.

These jets are different than a traditional metering orifice, which is still required to meter the liquid fertilizer flow. While some metering orifices are colored, they are not interchangeable with the EFM jets.

Wilger’s Row-By-Row Flowmeters

The compact flow meter is different than your traditional flow meter in a lot of ways.

Material:
With the TPX polymer body, you get a non-stick surface, excellent chemical resistance, and a clear body that you can use to visually check that the paddle wheel is spinning for any troubleshooting.

Maintenance:
The flowmeters are made and designed by Wilger, ensuring every piece can be serviced and replaced; whereas often flowmeters are virtually impossible or impractical to service or even replace.

The only designed part that should wear out and effect accuracy should be the paddle wheel, which can simply be replaced in seconds.

Patent-Pending Stabilizing Jets:
The flowmeters have 4 different sizes of stabilizing jets that maintain better accuracy over the operating flow range of the flow meter. The operational ranges below optimize the jet to the application for peak accuracy; however, as long as the jet doesn’t restrict the orifice flow, it can still be as a flow indicator (reduced accuracy).

Green Jet: 0.04 – 0.12 us gpm flow range
Red Jet: 0.10 – 0.31 us gpm flow range
Blue Jet: 0.18 – 0.98 us gpm flow range
Black Jet: 0.57 – 1.53 us gpm flow range

Visual ball flow indicator trying to show humic acid can become a difficult problem when visibility is poor.

 

As field sizes get larger, with the same amount of hours in the day, it is not uncommon to be planting in the dark. Coupled with a lot of applied products actually being dark liquids, even in the daytime, you can be planting in the dark.

As the flow monitoring system performs well with any liquids, colored or not, it becomes a truly valuable tool to have in the cab when you are planting with very little trustworthy feedback on how your liquid is applied (until it is too late). Simply plug in the EFM and harnesses, set the app up as you’d like it with custom threshold alarms, and continue on with your work.

Visual ball flow indicator trying to show a red starter fertilizer (Paralign™) can be a challenge, even with white colored balls, in less-than-ideal conditions.

 

System Harnessing & Electronics

To maximize the flowmeter’s compatibility with any systems capable of interpreting a raw pulse frequency, the flow meter’s output is raw pulses. The simple feedback is straight-forward for system monitor manufacturers that operate on ISOBUS/CANBUS/etc to take in the flow rate for other purposes (mapping, variable rate tracking, etc.)

As such, Wilger is continuing work with OEM system manufacturers and welcoming other system manufacturers to pull the EFM sensor feedback into their existing monitors and systems to be able to provide more value to their users.

 

Example EFM System Costing

For EFM system costing, as each implement is different, it can vary from $130-220 per row.

To estimate a cost, assume you will require one ECU kit (#20603-00; including battery harness, antenna, ECU, and terminator), at least one 16-Channel Node Kit per 16 sensors required (#20621-00; including 16CH node, 16CH node harness, 4x quad-sensor cables), 1x flowmeter (#20580-00) per row, as well as the plumbing parts required to feed the manifolds.

If implements are able to keep plumbing manifold in a central location, it can ensure the electronics and harnessing have less chance of damage, but it will also use the product nodes and harnessing more efficiently, saving cost.