Does anyone have any experience with the low cut head that attaches to the Husqvarna 550 EPOS? I have tested it out on bermudagrass below 1 inch and the cut quality is poor. But is this only for bermudagrass? What about other grasses? Or are my observations on low cut for this unit wrong?
550 RPM is pretty slow and if it gets behind the cut quality is significantly reduced. Really can only maintain 1/2 acre of lower cut. The newer class of H are faster rpm which I think tells you something.
I’ve tested both kress and husqvarna 550 on Tacoma and the kress was significantly better. I believe this for two reasons, double cutting discs and faster rpm. The Ceora also has fantastic cut quality on zoysia, which again has multiple cutting discs and faster RPM.
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So even without the skid plate, the Kress is still better in your opinion? I haven’t dropped my Kress mowers down that low yet but the cut quality and speed at 1.5 inches have been incredible.
Cut quality with the Husqvarna 550 is just terrible on bermudagrass without the skid plate – from what I have seen. But that may be more of a cut motor strength issue than anything. Who knows?
I wouldn’t go below .65 with kress as is.
We have actually developed our own low cut discs that solve some of these problems, I’ll send you a set.
I don’t have any experience with bermuda but I would imagine that a lot of this has to do with the frequency of mowing too and how much the grass is growing and bogging down the equipment. We have seen pretty good success at the higher mowing heights, but less at lower heights in cool season turf.
I think that is true about the frequency when dealing with cool season. But with bermudagrass as the height drops below about 1.5 inches, it becomes a netting that the blades start shredding and getting caught in. In playing around with the blades, if I lock the blades into place then the cutting is no longer a flail and the quality is better. Also, I test the blades from Nexmow on a Husqvarna and those blades are a better cut because they are slightly longer and diamond shaped. Having said that, I think there needs to be more thought put into the ideal style of blades that needs to be used. Definitely some improvements to be made. Thoughts?
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There is a husqvarna blade you can get on Amazon called XL that is 43mm rather than the 35mm. These provide a cleaner cut and most of my customers prefer them. The original Bosch blade, the blade nexmow uses, is slightly too long and will hit the front casters when backing up.
Also I would zip tie the wire bundle together as the longer blades have a tendency to cut those wires if they get pulled out.
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Have you tried the Kress fairway kit discs? Those are spec’d 10mm-40mm hoc.
I am supposed to get the disks next week to test in the spring. I can say this, it has to have a skid plate below the blade disk or it is really hard to go below 1 to 1.5 inches for anything. The Kress cut motors are strong so I have seen great cut quality on ryegrass at 1 inch without the skid plate (or floating plate, whatever they call it), but have not seen this low on bermudagrass. So cut motors are good, blade configuration is good. Just need to test the low cut system with the skid plates to see how it does on fairway/sports high end mowing. What do you think @bentsod? Any experience? Anyone else?
I’ve cut meyer at .65 with kress fairway kits. As currently configured I wouldn’t go below that.
We have demoed the Echo Tm-2050 standard discs on our bentgrass fields, excellent quality but higher than our reel mowers. Have seen pictures and videos from Europe of Kress and Ceora on low cut bentgrass so am trying to figure out what would be required and what would be reasonable expectations.
@scott We have had success on cool season grasses at lower heights of cut with the 550 EPOS units. Quality of cut is not issue on cool season, as long as you are changing blades bi weekly - weekly. You also have to understand that effective height of cut compared to traditional mowing equipment is different, so there is an adjustment that will need to be made. .400" is really more like .500", I recommend running traditional mower and then working to match height of cut with robotic mower.
I shared the same experience on zoysia in St.Louis. Only solution at the time was decrease acreage and increase frequency. Efficiency went way down. Seedheads absolutely killed it. Our zoysia was also too dense to get down and get a true height of cut as well. I believe this was the sentiment behind husq making the 580 Epos. Stronger motor with more voltage and I believe slighter longer blades.
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Just looking for clarification… 0.400” on a traditional reel fairway mower, 0.400” on a robotic mower, which has a lower effective height of cut?
We are mowing bentgrass and use reelmaster wiehle (grooved) rollers bench set at 0.400”.
The traditional reel will have a lower effective height of cut, due to weight of reel/down pressure. The robotic mower will have a higher effective height of cut because of the lighter footprint and cutting system design.
Yeah comparing traditional mowers with robots with respect to mowing heights is apples and oranges. I have seen a Ceora have an effective height of cut down to 0.35 but only on ryegrass. Thatch density can push the height up with robots on other turfgrasses. But I don’t know if any of that really matters and there may not be a difference between 0.4 and 0.5 of different mowers. From a turfgrass perspective the real question is how does a ball or cleat respond to the different mowing types. That is a definite known unknown.