Flail of a time for visitors

by Nick Drew | Mon 26 Oct 2015

Flail of a time for visitors

Devon based Hanix dealer Machine Serve recently held another open day event at its premises in Chulmleigh focusing on flail mowers and despite wet conditions on the Saturday there was a steady stream of customers keen to take a look, the Digger Man Blog was there to catch a bit of the action.

Machine Serve have recently taken on the dealership to sell the Italian Ghedini flail mowers and other attachments made by the company who are based in the north eastern town of Santa Maria Codifiume in Italy. The company was founded in 1984 and make a wide range of attachments for excavators, backhoe loaders, skid steers and tractors, but the main focus of this event was excavator mounted flail mowers which are gaining popularity in the UK like most excavator mounted attachments.

Having recently sold my old Berti flail mower I have been looking at the Ghedini range as a possible replacement to fit my Takeuchi TB235, so I was keen to take a closer look at these models which are apparently of equal quality but competitively priced. The smallest example on display was the DA63 heavy duty which was mounted on a new 1.5 tonne class Hanix H17D. The mower itself requires an oil flow of 36 l/min has a cutting width of 650mm and weighs in at 185kgs.

I took to the controls of the H17D to see how the mower coped with some brush wood. Looking at the flails fitted which are of a Y shaped knife design, I was initially a bit sceptical having had traditional flail hammers on my old Berti, but in the cut they seemed to cope equally well if not better, having said that it would be interesting to see how they cope with larger diameter branches.

These mowers feature a bidirectional motor which means you can cut in both directions and thanks to their clever design, do not require an additional free flow return line to the hydraulic tank. The size to suit my machine is the DA83 which had been mounted for the event on a traded in JCB 8030 ZTS model.

This unit was being test driven by one of the visitors who was looking at the possibility of mounting a mower on his 5 tonne mini excavator.

As is often the case with a zero tail swing machine the weight is a compromise so over the side with the mower it was noticeable that the machine was a bit light on the rear end, but the operator soon became accustomed to the limits and made steady progress trimming the hedge.

The largest mower on display was the DK69 which was mounted on a Hitachi ZX130LCN machine. This is a serious piece of kit which has a cutting width of 1600mm, weighs in at 600kgs and requires an oil flow of 100 l/min.

Ghedini offer a very wide range of mowers or brush cutters as they describe them and you can see some of them in action, along with other products from the Ghedini's portfolio in this promotional video from the company. [youtube width="725" height="344"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzGOw1ZWZgc[/youtube] We thank Phil and his team for the kind hospitality offered to us on the morning of our visit.

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