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Platform for the management and construction of sports and golf courses
New modular concept
The first week of December saw the Agribex fair take place. The federation of agricultural and garden mechanisation organises this biennial fair at the Heysel Palaces in Brussels. For five days, farmers and garden contractors were able to marvel at all the beauty of their sector. Belgian manufacturer ELIET saw this fair in its home market as the appointment to show off its novelties.
ELIET took this opportunity to present the new modular concept of its EcoCure™. The EcoCureTM ZR-WS was presented two years ago as the first self-propelled top-dresser in the range. The aim with this EcoCure™ ZR-WS was to provide a professional solution for garden contractors and greenkeepers to increase the deployability of a topdresser on small lawn areas, such as in a private garden, and on medium-sized areas such as a football pitch. ELIET designed the machine to be compact and manoeuvrable, with an oversized width of 90 cm, so you can enter just about any garden with it to enable professional topdressing. The travel drive is fully hydrostatic with an infinitely adjustable travel speed both forwards and backwards, allowing topdressing in any direction of travel. The twin wheels under the handlebars allow you to guide the EcoCureTM effortlessly and with great precision over any lawn. The machine's turning circle is just 1.2 metres. Despite its compact dimensions (210 x 90 cm), the EcoCureTM ZR-WS still has a 450-litre hopper (expandable to 600 litres). In turn, the wide pneumatic tyres minimise ground pressure to avoid rutting.
At the bottom of the conical bunker, a hydraulically driven conveyor belt, 45 cm wide, carries the top-dressing material away to the spreading device. The flow rate of spreading material can be controlled by the speed of the belt and by the adjustable opening below the guillotine slide. The interfering material falls onto two hydraulically driven spreader discs (diameter 38 cm) that spread it wide. Indeed, when the machine is named, WS stands for “widespread”. With a spreading width of up to six metres, the EcoCureTM can handle a wide range of lawn spreading additives: fine compost, coarse compost, sand, lime but also fertiliser granules. Moreover, the machine can also be used for spreading salt in winter.
Despite the extensive capabilities of this EcoCure™ ZR-WS, we know that top-dressing is not a weekly activity for a garden contractor or greenkeeper. ELIET always strives to create the greatest possible added value for its customers with its machines. Because an investment in an ELIET topdresser would not be a dormant capital, the company decided to further develop the concept of its EcoCure™ into a machine that can be used for other applications. During this design exercise, ELIET engineers transformed the undercarriage, which contains all the drive components, into a multifunctional carrier.
Other attachments can now be built on the universal platform. A quick coupling system was provided that allows the WS top-dressing module to be removed and a tipping bucket to be built up in a few minutes, without the use of tools. The tipping bucket developed by ELIET for this purpose has dimensions of 122 cm x 81 cm, good for a loading volume of three hundred litres and a capacity of up to five hundred kilograms. The aluminium side panels can be folded down to widen the loading platform to 141 cm. The cargo box is equipped with a hydraulic piston that allows it to tip out to the rear.
Such an alternative body module can be used by a garden contractor or greenkeeper on an almost daily basis. The proportional travel drive, great manoeuvrability and footprint with low ground pressure, are assets of the undercarriage that are extremely advantageous with the EcoCure™ in transport trolley mode.
To further expand the multifunctional nature of the EcoCure™, ELIET also foresees a Drop-Spread spreader, a spraying device and more Lawn Professionals who invest in an EcoCure™ will be able to use their investment more and more frequently which will only grow their ROI.
