Innovative unit automates roadside slashing

What started out as an idea three years ago has blossomed into a working product for local Australian start-up, SlasherTeck, which claims its invention offers the ideal solution for cutting grass around sign posts and poles lining highways and byways.

The company says the unit eliminates costly labour and helps save time by only requiring one man in a tractor with the innovative slasher attached to do the job.

It also promotes environmental sustainability by eliminating the spraying of chemicals and producing recyclable mulch, SlasherTeck adds.

"Not only does this make roadside work safer, but it also cuts out a huge part of the hazard for passing traffic that currently has to suddenly slow down for men at work," says SlasherTeck founder and inventor, Nathan Boyle.

"The job is done much sooner and the hazard is removed much quicker."

The key to the innovation is a patented rotating triple-bladed mulching unit that can slash around posts. It features a single slot to accommodate posts of different sizes. Once the mulching unit is placed around a post, it rotates around it while cutting the grass, using a hydraulically driven motor and 12 mulching blades.

"The slasher cuts the rest of the verge as per normal, then once it approaches a post, the operator engages the post-slashing process, which rotates the blades a full 180 degrees in approximately 10 seconds," Boyle explains.

The cutter can be linked up with SlasherTeck's recently patented Slasher Operation and Asset Management System (SOAMS) that uses GPS and cloud-based technology to remember the work it has done.

When the grass grows back, SlasherTeck claims the technology will know where the posts are on a particular stretch of road and can repeat the job it did previously.

The slasher unit comprises a 900mm reach arm mower head, a front-mounted slasher and a side shift tilt hitch.

Manufactured by metal engineering company T.W. Woods Construction in the Hunter Valley region (NSW), the slasher has been trialled extensively before being released on the local and international market.

T.W. Woods Construction director Tom Woods says the company builds SlasherTeck to the same "bulletproof standards" of the multi-storey train loaders and coal materials handling equipment it manufactures.

"We make all our products tough because our markets demand the reliability and credibility of world-class producers," he says.

"Local and state authorities also deal in big projects and large asset bases where time is money, so they need to know the product is as tough as they come."

Visit www.slasherteck.com for more information.