Let us be clear here.  A Spray-Air field sprayer is not JUST an air assist sprayer, nor it is JUST an air atomizing sprayer.  When equipped with the Trident^TM Boom System and the Shear Guard^TM PLUS Nozzle Technology, it is a much more powerful and versatile application tool than that.

Let's define what each type of sprayer really is:

What is Air Assist?  

An Air Assist Sprayer utilizes conventional hydraulic nozzles situated along the length of the spray boom much like any other conventional boom sprayer.  The "Air Assist" comes in the form, traditionally, of a fan and an air bag running the entire length of the boom.  The fan forces a volume of air through the air bag, which has holes or slots along the bottom edge to direct an curtain of air down towards the crop.  In theory, the air curtain is supposed to protect the conventional spray pattern from winds while at the same time dragging or pulling the spray into the crop.  Essentially, the air assist method helps to ensure greater leaf surface coverage through deep canopy penetration.

What is an Air Atomizing Nozzle?  

An air atomizing nozzle in injected with a small air line that is fed by an on-board air compressor.  The injected air will atomize the droplets as they exit the atomizing nozzle along the principles of more air = finer droplets and less air = coarser droplets.  There is no downward air blast nor are the droplets protected from winds.

What is the Shear Guard^TM PLUS Nozzle?  

In essence, it is a hybrid of both an Air Assist and an Air Atomizing Nozzle with a history that predates both technologies.

Benefits and Limitations:

Air Assist Benefits:

• Air blast pulls spray into canopy, protecting from wind, and helping to ensure deeper canopy penetration and leaf surface coverage.

Air Assist Limitations:

• Air Assist must work with traditional hydraulic nozzles.  The air assist can only work with the droplets that are created by the conventional nozzles.  This means the operator does not have control of droplet sizes on the fly and must change from one nozzle to another to change droplet sizes specific to each application.  Limited also by the fact that conventional nozzles tend to produce a proportionately large portion of the droplets in a wide variance of sizes, often too large for many of the common herbicide and fungicide applications.  Air Assist can't overcome the limited, often inefficient nature of many conventional flat fan nozzles.

Air Atomizing Nozzle Benefits:

• Creates the right sized droplet size on the fly with operator control in the cab.

Air Atomizing Nozzle Limitations:

• Does not have an air blast to drive the spray (the right sized spray pattern) into dense canopies, thus limiting the overall coverage potential in coverage-intense applications.  Often drift-prone with no protection from winds as well.

Shear Guard^TM PLUS Nozzle with Dial-A-Drop^TM Technology by Spray-Air Benefits:

• Atomizes the spray droplets to an extremely tight and consistent size range on the fly with operator control in the cab.  Creates the optimum sized droplets for each application situation instantaneously.

• Directs the optimized spray droplets deep into the crop canopy ensuring complete top to bottom leaf surface coverage.  With the optimum droplet sizes, the air blast of the Shear Guard^TM PLUS Nozzle ensures the most plant coverage and deposition of active agent of any spray application system available on the market today!

• Enables a very efficient use of water volumes, often in the range of 2.5 to 5 gallons per acre, and often from 6 to 10 GPA with fungicides.

• More Benefits Here

Shear Guard^TM PLUS Nozzle Limitations:

• NOT limited like air assist in that the Shear Guard^TM PLUS produces the Optimum Sized Droplets on it's own!

• NOT limited like the air atomizing nozzle in that the Shear Guard^TM PLUS drives the Optimum Sized Droplets deep into the plant canopy with it's own air blast, ensuring complete and thorough leaf surface coverage!