Dave on Optical Spot Sprayer Nozzles

Tapered Fan nozzles V Banding (Even Spray) nozzles for Optical Spot Sprayers.

With the release of ARAG/ASJ’s first purpose designed 2,4-D compliant (XC) Optical Spot Spray nozzle (subject label nozzle height and buffer zone restrictions), I felt it was time to put pen to paper regarding the real world considerations in choosing between narrow angled overlapping fan nozzles and banding (even spray) nozzles.

Firstly, All you need to know about spot spraying is covered in Tom Wolf’s article. You can find it here.

The main points to take home, with the added benefit of some Q & A with Tom follow;

Current Spot Spray capable booms involve a mix of single nozzle banding and multiple nozzle broadcasting on the same boom.

Effective band width management requires a band approximately equal to the nozzle spacing, but providing enough overlap that when multiple nozzles are activated, it still provides good uniformity.

According to Tom, of the various ‘spot spray’ nozzles in the market today, whether they are even spray or overlapping is less relevant than the primary consideration of maintaining consistent boom height.

Wheeled booms can achieve this. Suspended booms are more challenging as even a few inches up and down will result in large rate and coverage variations at either end of the boom.

Tom also noted from a previous study that - “An even fan will only be even at very slow speeds. At commercial speeds, the air resistance creates vortices which remove the finest droplets from the middle of the fan and place them at the edges. In fact a normal tapered fan will become even due to the same forces when operating individually.”

Go to our spot spray page for full information Spot Spray Nozzles

Dave Young

08 6102 5886