Systems, methods, and apparatus for agricultural material application

Douglas William Urbaniak, Mackinaw, IL (US); Jeremy Hodel, Morton, IL (US); Jordan Charles Solberg, East Peoria, IL (US)

USPTO: us-12642161 · published 2026-06-02 · patents · A01C 5/064· A01C 5/068· A01B 63/008· A01C 7/06· A01C 7/203

Systems, methods, and apparatus for agricultural material application

Jeremy Hodel, Morton, IL (US) , Douglas William Urbaniak, Mackinaw, IL (US) , Jordan Charles Solberg, East Peoria, IL (US) This is my paper

Pith reviewed 2026-06-03 02:31 UTC · model grok-4.3

classification patents A01C 5/064A01C 5/068A01B 63/008A01C 7/06A01C 7/203

keywords agricultural row unitknife adjustmentmaterial deliverytrench placementgauge wheelfertilizer applicationlateral spacing

0 comments

The pith

A pivoting knife on an agricultural row unit slides sideways to set exact material placement distance from the opened trench.

A machine-rendered reading of the paper's core claim, the machinery that carries it, and where it could break.

The patent describes a row unit that carries a material-delivery knife whose forward end rides on a pivot located ahead of the gauge wheel while its rear end extends below the wheel into or beside the trench. The knife can be shifted laterally along that pivot, primarily in the horizontal plane and perpendicular to travel direction, so the operator can change how far the delivered material lands from the seed furrow without altering gauge-wheel position or depth setting. This arrangement keeps the knife clear of residue and soil flow while allowing on-the-go or preset adjustment of lateral spacing. A sympathetic reader would care because precise side-band placement of fertilizer or other inputs can improve nutrient-use efficiency and reduce the need for separate passes.

Core claim

The central claim is an agricultural row unit whose knife is mounted with its first end forward of the gauge wheel on a pivot axis and its second end below the gauge wheel, the knife carrying a material-delivery conduit; the knife is free to slide along the pivot primarily horizontally and transverse to travel so that the lateral offset between the conduit outlet and the trench can be varied while the gauge wheel continues to control depth.

What carries the argument

Pivot-and-slide mounting of the knife ahead of the gauge wheel, allowing horizontal transverse adjustment of material outlet position relative to the trench.

If this is right

A single row unit can apply material at multiple selectable distances from the seed without changing gauge-wheel settings or requiring extra toolbar passes.
The same trench-opening and depth-control hardware can be used for both seed and side-band fertilizer placement by one adjustment.
Operators can match material offset to soil type or crop requirement by sliding the knife rather than swapping hardware.

Where Pith is reading between the lines

These are editorial extensions of the paper, not claims the author makes directly.

If the adjustment proves reliable, planters could carry multiple knives on the same pivot to deliver two different materials at independent offsets in one pass.
The mechanism may reduce the mechanical complexity of separate side-dress coulters by integrating placement control directly into the gauge-wheel assembly.

Load-bearing premise

The sliding pivot connection can be built strongly enough to survive field forces without losing depth control or clogging with soil and residue.

What would settle it

A side-by-side field run in typical corn stubble soil in which the adjustable knife either loses consistent depth or jams when the operator attempts to change its lateral position while moving.

read the original abstract

1 . An agricultural row unit comprising: a frame; an opening assembly coupled to the frame to open a trench in a soil surface; a gauge wheel mounted to the frame and disposed to support the agricultural row unit; and a knife disposed with a first end ahead of the gauge wheel about a pivot and a second end below the gauge wheel and comprising a material delivery conduit disposed on, through, or adjacent the knife to deliver material to soil with a lateral placement from the trench, wherein the knife is laterally adjustable along the pivot primarily in a horizontal direction and transverse to a direction of travel of the agricultural row unit to adjust a lateral spacing between the knife and the trench for the lateral placement.

Editorial analysis

A structured set of objections, weighed in public.

Desk editor's note, referee report, simulated authors' rebuttal, and a circularity audit. Tearing a paper down is the easy half of reading it; the pith above is the substance, this is the friction.

Desk Editor's Note private letter to a colleague

This is a utility patent application for a laterally sliding knife on a planter row unit; it is a mechanical claim set with drawings and no data or tests.

read the letter

This document is a U.S. patent application that describes a row unit with a pivot-mounted knife that can slide sideways to change where liquid or dry material lands relative to the seed trench. The main claim combines a gauge wheel, an opening assembly, and a knife that pivots ahead of the wheel and carries a delivery conduit, with the knife adjustable along the pivot in the horizontal direction transverse to travel. That specific mounting and adjustment arrangement is what the filing presents as the invention. The drawings show the geometry clearly enough for someone who builds planters to understand the intended motion. Beyond that, the text supplies no measurements, no field results, and no comparison data against existing side-dress or in-furrow hardware. Because it is a legal filing rather than a research report, questions about rigidity under load, residue flow, or depth consistency are left unaddressed. The work is therefore useful only to readers who need to know the exact claim language for prior-art searches or freedom-to-operate checks. It does not contain the kind of evidence or analysis that would justify sending it to scientific referees. If the goal is to track new mechanical arrangements in planting equipment, the filing is worth a quick look at the figures; otherwise it can be set aside.

Referee Report

0 major / 3 minor

Summary. The manuscript is a U.S. utility patent application (US-12642161) whose sole content is a set of apparatus claims and accompanying drawings for an agricultural row unit. Claim 1 describes a frame, opening assembly, gauge wheel, and a knife mounted on a pivot ahead of the gauge wheel whose second end lies below the wheel and carries a material-delivery conduit; the knife is laterally adjustable along the pivot in a primarily horizontal direction transverse to travel so that the lateral spacing between the knife and the opened trench can be varied.

Significance. The described mechanism, if reduced to practice, would permit on-the-fly lateral offset of material placement relative to the seed trench while preserving gauge-wheel depth control. No performance data, field tests, scaling arguments, or comparisons with existing side-dress or injector geometries are supplied, so the practical advantage cannot be quantified from the document itself.

minor comments (3)

The document contains no abstract, introduction, methods, results, or discussion sections typical of a journal article; it consists exclusively of numbered claims and figure descriptions.
No references to prior art, commercial products, or peer-reviewed literature are present beyond the implicit patent citations required by USPTO format.
Figure legends and dimensional call-outs are absent; the drawings are referenced only by number in the claims.

Simulated Author's Rebuttal

2 responses · 0 unresolved

We thank the referee for reviewing the application. We clarify that US-12642161 is a utility patent application whose statutory purpose is to claim novel apparatus, not to report experimental results. The absence of field data is therefore expected and does not constitute a ground for rejection under patent law.

read point-by-point responses

Referee: The described mechanism would permit on-the-fly lateral offset of material placement, yet no performance data, field tests, scaling arguments, or comparisons are supplied, so the practical advantage cannot be quantified.

Authors: Patent applications are examined for novelty, non-obviousness, and enablement under 35 U.S.C. §§ 102, 103, and 112. They do not require empirical performance data or comparative field trials; enablement is satisfied by the written description and drawings that allow a person skilled in the art to make and use the claimed row unit. The lateral-adjustment feature is fully enabled by the pivot-and-knife geometry recited in claim 1. revision: no
Referee: Recommendation: reject

Authors: Because the document is a patent application rather than a journal manuscript, the criteria applied (absence of performance data) are not applicable. We therefore respectfully request that the application continue under the appropriate patent-examination standards. revision: no

Circularity Check

0 steps flagged

No derivation chain or predictions present

full rationale

The document is a U.S. utility patent consisting solely of apparatus claims describing a mechanical row-unit assembly. No equations, fitted parameters, scaling relations, performance predictions, or derivations of any kind appear in the text. Consequently no step can reduce to its own inputs by construction, and the circularity score is 0.

Axiom & Free-Parameter Ledger

0 free parameters · 0 axioms · 0 invented entities

No scientific axioms, free parameters, or invented physical entities are present; the document is a patent specification of a mechanical assembly.

pith-pipeline@v0.9.0 · 5704 in / 944 out tokens · 43890 ms · 2026-06-03T02:31:05.452598+00:00 · methodology

Systems, methods, and apparatus for agricultural material application

Core claim

What carries the argument

If this is right

Where Pith is reading between the lines

Load-bearing premise

What would settle it

discussion (0)