“You’re not only buying the equipment, you’re buying the experience, you’re buying the support,” he says. “I think that’s probably more important than what the tool is, that you have the support behind it to really get the machine rolling, because time is the most important. Carbon Robotics is very unique in that respect.” 2. Western Growers plans to release a case study about Triangle Farms’ experience with the Stout Smart Cultivator later in 2024. 3. The value proposition of the machine is justified when running in certain types of weeding densities and sizes. The higher the density of weeds in a field, the slower the LaserWeeder will run. 4. The LaserWeeder does not have folding wings that will allow it to remain attached to the tractor during transportation. Instead it must be disconnected from the tractor and placed onto a trailer. The custom trailer developed by Carbon Robotics allows for transportation with a ¾- or 1-ton pickup. Maneuvering the 20-foot-wide implement may also be a challenge for small farms or those with fences.
Triangle Farms also has smaller fields and needed to figure out a way to transport the LaserWeeder. Carbon Robotics developed a custom trailer for that, which has proved very effective for Triangle Farms. 4 Beyond those initial management adjustments, running the LaserWeeder has gone smoothly, and there’s little training necessary on the operator side. “The UI (user interface) of the machine is so robust that it really doesn’t take anything other than an operator to select what crops they’re in and what their goal is [weeding or thinning],” Roberts says. “And it’s multilingual.” Most importantly, Roberts was impressed with the level of support they received from Carbon Robotics and how they developed a solution that would work on different types of farms in various locations.
TRIANGLE FARMS DID NOT NEED ANY ADDITIONAL HAND WEEDING AFTER RUNNING THE LASERWEEDER ON THEIR ORGANIC ARUGULA, SAVING THEM $251.27 PER ACRE.
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