Precision Sowing
for Nurseries
The horticultural industry’s answer to the need for improved efficiency at a comfortable sowing speed, while maintain precision placement, is the Simplicity range.
Developed in South Africa, with ongoing developments since 1984, ZR Developments, has gathered years of knowledge and experience that has been applied to designing a machine that gives nurseries the opportunity to produce high quality “plugs”.
The Simplicity range is locally manufactured with the highest quality non-corrosive and maintenance-free materials. This small, compact and self-contained machine, sows into seedling tray cavities maintaining the high seeding quality required by the industry.
The Simplicity range is designed to pick-up and place seeds as small as begonia to those as large as pine. This adaptability includes all pelletized and non-pelletized seed as well, planting with fine accuracy and negligible seed wastage.
About Us
Established in 1984, ZR Developments is a local South African company originally catering to the needs of the forestry nursery industry. ZR Developments then designed and produced sowers to provide the vegetable and flower nurseries the same high-quality seeding, that the Industry requires.
By specialising in advanced nursery technology to combine both speed and accuracy in seed sowing, ZR Developments has built up an impressive client base, with an International footprint in 15 countries, including Chile, Uruguay, Argentina, Papua New Guinea, Borneo, Sweden, Kenya, Mauritius and Argentina to name but a few.
Experience, knowledge and international footprint
Products
The Simplicity range is a state-of-the-art sower offering precision sowing for nurseries.
The latest machine is the SERVO 2020, the first-of-its-kind in the Simplicity sower range developed to be part of a complete production line.
All our models are fully customized to suit needs, i.e. tray size, seed size, number of seeds per cavity required and the desired sowing height. These features make Simplicity precise to prevent seed wastage while maintaining the high quality of seeding.
Changing seeds is a quick and simple operation and changing the tray configuration takes one to two minutes by, if necessary, changing the sowing head, this only applies to nurseries that use more than one configuration of seedling tray
Simplicity sows into a seedling tray in approximately 1.2sec per row, this is a very good indication to work out the speed production and number of seedling trays that you will be able to sow per hour. The sowing speed varies between models.
Simplicity has a built-in air supply & vacuum system and therefore an external compressor is not necessary. All our models are supplied with “adjustable height dibbers”. It is semi-automatic, sits on a table-top and can be operated by a single person for short seed sowing runs for the flower industry, as well as longer runs or continuous production on the automatic for the brassica/vegetable and forestry industries.
As a guideline, all three Simplicity Sowers can and will sow the full range of seeds, but the Simplicity Manual is particularly used by the flower industry as they do very short runs before seed change. The Automatic does the same thing but is user friendly for the long production runs. The Servo 2020 is designed especially for long runs to be integrated into a sowing line so it will receive the filled seedling tray, take the tray straight to the needles, the machine then goes into an index mode while it is sowing and then it will take the tray to the next stage – which could be capping, watering etc. The other advantage it has IF IT IS NOT in a line, the operator simply puts the tray anywhere on the moving belt and it will be taken automatically to the sowing cycle. The most important part of this Model is it is driven with servo motors, controlled by a “touch screen” which makes the operator able to make any change he likes while the machine is running. So, a fine tune in long production runs is very cost effective.
ZR offer a tray filler, which has a variety of options as well as, compactors, vibrators and in-feed conveyor to the hopper. Another option with the tray filler is as the speeds are digitally controlled it could be used as a capping unit
Simplicity Manual
This sower is designed for smaller start up nurseries with short runs. It is particularly suitable for flower nurseries, as it is capable of sowing seeds as small as the Begonia, singly. With a simple needle change, the Simplicity will sow cabbage or any other seed, including forestry, sowing as many as 500 trays in an 8-hour day. This versatile machine has tried and tested applications in forestry, flower and vegetable nurseries.
Although it is called the Manual, the conveyor belt indexes the seedling trays automatically.
Simplicity Automatic
The advantage of the Automatic over the Manual is that where the sowing head is hand operated in the Manual, this function is automated.
The Automatic boasts all the same advantages as the Manual in terms of its versatility in seed range, with the added advantage of being able to produce up to 700 trays per day.
The Simplicity Automatic has achieved great success in vegetable and forestry nurseries.
Tray Filler
The machine is designed to fill all configurations of seedling trays and has the ability to set speeds digitally, where the trays are scraped and brushed to give a clean surface tray for sowing. The machine will fill bark medium as well as peat with coir.
Simplicity Servo 2020
The Simplicity Servo 2020 utilises servo technology to enhance the operation of the machine, allowing the belt to run automatically, indexing new trays and positioning them precisely for the next cycle to the sowing head, it will then go into the index mode, while sowing, once the tray is sown the belt reverts back to continuous mode, which takes the tray to the next station and at the same time it takes the filled tray from the filler or the next tray is introduced, then the machine reverts back to the index mode while sowing . It is designed to form part of a line. After filling and brushing, trays can be placed onto the Simplicity Servo belt, at random, it will automatically put the sowing tray onto whatever else may be in the line, like capping, watering, etc. at which time the Simplicity will go into index mode to accept the next tray. All parameters may be changed via the screen at any time during production.
We would always like to discuss your requirements to enable us
to advise which model suits your application
ZR Auto and Development
04 October 2020
ZR Auto and Development
SIMPLICITY SERVO 2020 SOWING VEGETABLES
ZR Auto and Development
SIMPLICITY SERVO 2020 TOUCH SCREEN OPERATION
ZR Auto and Development
Simplicity Auto
Training Video
ZR Auto and Development
History of the fluid drill machine
Fluid drill was used to sow pre germinated seed specially for Eucalyptus, this particulary machine is 30...
ZR Auto and Development
Tray filler
This unit does not show the compactor as tray hides it from view
ZR Auto and Development
Simplicity Servo 2020
Latest design of Simplicity utilizing Servo drive motors
ZR Auto and Development
Simplicity Manual
Demonstration video on the Simplicity Manual
ZR Auto and Development
ZR Developments Simplicity
