Valuable farmhands: Essential tools for agricultural equipment

The chores never end on a farm. And because farms require a variety of agricultural equipment to function, it’s crucial to have the right tools on hand to keep the wheels turning. Besides the importance of such tools for farmers themselves, for shops in a suburban fringe or rural area, having ag-friendly tools gives technicians more versatility in the equipment they can service. Consider the following categories of tools to keep farm equipment working from sunup to sundown.

Battery Service

A dead battery can ruin a day’s productivity. Being able to quickly tend batteries and put vehicles back into service is crucial on any farm or ranch. A powerful jump starter is the tool that will get heavy equipment up and running in short order. A professional-grade jump starter will also work as a battery tester, usually incorporate LED lights to illuminate local surroundings, and can charge accessory devices.

Not all farm implements run a 12V system, so for maximum flexibility, a smart charger that can revive 6V, 12V, and 24V batteries is a good choice.

Weather out in the fields can swing from brutally cold to scorching hot over the course of a year, so seek out a charger that can handle those extremes with built in temperature sensors and fan cooling that can automatically change the charging power according to temperature.

Thermal Cameras

A thermal camera is the tool most people don’t know they need. There are all sorts of different ways to use a thermal imager. I always tell people, ‘It’s the one tool that is almost only limited by your imagination.’

The advantage of a thermal camera is that it lets the user see issues not visible to the naked eye. If there’s an electrical connection problem, high resistance or something of that nature, it can be spotted easily with the thermal imager. In the case of mechanical fatigue, say for instance a combine where one of the bearings is making a bunch of noise but it’s hard to tell which one it is, the differences in temperature between

bearings will be visible. It can even be used if there’s a concern small animals might be hiding in the machinery.

Many people would be surprised at the capabilities of the thermal options that are readily available. At TOPDON, we make a hand-held thermal camera that has been ‘ruggedized ’for extreme environments that also has a dual camera. It has a regular photographical camera and a high-resolution thermal camera, and it interweaves the two images into one composite image for truly impressive clarity.