From steel plate to cultivator: a day on our works floor

Our works in Focal Point builds around 18 cultivators on a normal day in the rabi season, alongside ploughs, drills and trolleys. Here is how a single 11-tine cultivator moves through the floor, from steel plate to the dispatch yard.

It starts at the laser cutter at 8 am. Sheets of steel plate, 8 to 12 mm thick, are cut into side plates, tine brackets and the three-point hitch parts, following drawings stored in the machine. A laser cut is clean and exact to under a millimetre, so parts fit without hammering. The heavy box-section frame tubes are cut to length on a band saw and drilled on a jig, so every hole lines up with the next cultivator’s.

Next, the parts go to bending, where a press brake forms the brackets, and then to welding. The main frame is welded on our robotic welding cell, which lays the same strong, even weld on every joint, every time. Smaller brackets and repairs are welded by hand by our senior welders, Harpreet and Jaswinder. Every frame is checked for squareness on a flat steel table; one that is out by more than 3 mm is corrected before it goes further.

The frame is then shot-blasted to clean the steel, primed and painted in our paint shop, and baked dry. Finally, the spring tines, boron steel shoes, depth wheels and hitch pins are fitted, and the cultivator is tagged with its serial number. Every tenth one goes to our Doraha test farm for a field check before the batch is dispatched.