no-till drills. I am lost

My only experience is with drop feed Brillion drills and old Deere drills. I need to catch up a bit and learn what to consider used or maybe what NOT to consider!

I would primarily plant cereal grains, and cover crop seed. Very much doubt I would plant corn or other row crop. As I understand it, planters basically are design for precise gauging of both spacing and depth since corn is picky like that? An air seeder or no-till drill (same thing?) uses air and delivery tubes to plant by opening the ground with openers (disc opener?) and flowing seed directly in the opening. Then the closer or press wheel shuts it down?

I would like to learn more about these for a cheap farmer and if the no-till will work fine in minimal tillage? I know my custom guy drilled a cereal for my right after cultivating. It was no issue at all but I question if I cultivate, will any drill do then? Like to old 500 dollar Deeres? There may be times I want to no-till but debating if getting a cultivator would be better than investment in a no-till drill?

We have run the john deere 750 and 1590 no till drills, and they are a great machine and will have a consistent stand compared to a conventional drill. These use the single disk system with gage wheels along side the disk to keep the seed depth consistent. The down side is when they wear out they are expensive to rebuild. Our county conservation rents the no till drills mentioned and at a cheaper rate than you can own one if you are only planting a few hundered acres or less. We also have a Marliss no till drill set up, it uses a coulter cart combined with a drill with twin v disk type planting units. It works fine, but personally the single disk set up used by the deeres seems to be a better system for high trash fieds and the gauge wheels on the deere seem to get a more uniform seed placement. We have also used the deere on conventional tillage and it just does a heck of a job on consistent seed placement. We have used the old deere press drills behind a cultivator, they just don't have the down pressure for trashy fields nor the gauge wheel to keep a consistent plant depth.
The old conventional drills are cheap and easy to maintain, whereas the no till units have a lot more bushings, wheels and bearings to wear out, so you need to look them over before buying.

If you have an old conventional drill plant a few rounds with it and either borrow, rent or steal a no till drill to plant the rest, the difference will be evident in the stand and yield.

Thanks for the info! I did talk to the ag off on rental of a Deere 750 and was $10/acre!! I had it planted last year hands off for $15/acre with a brand new Brillion no-till.

The main issue is I am at their mercy. I seem to remember a a Case IH air seeder at auction last year go for stupid cheap. LIke less than a grand and was low hours.

Air seeder uses a trailing hopper and pretty much a field cultivator in front. Seed is blown from the hopper to the field cultivator shovel "trenches". Generally big, expensive, large-acreage implements. JD's first version of the more recent notill drill, the model 750, is a very good implement but tends to be expensive and the subsequent models even more so. If using a pre-drill cultivating pass I like a press wheel drill, but really any drill either with a single or double disk opener is fine. A double run feed is better than fluted feed for larger seeds, but with cereals really no difference. If wanting a notill drill and limited budget, go with a mounted drill on a coulter cart. To cut soybean seed cost many are either using a splitter or planting in 30 inch rows and significantly dropping the seeding rate. Consequently quite a few drills with a notill coulter cart are being let go. I bought a 20 ft one for less than $4000 several years ago and use it to drill beans. I also cut the population from 180,000 to 140,000 seeds/acre and haven't had a low population problem. However if using a planter I would seriously consider dropping to 110,000 or at least to 120,000 seeds/acre. Did change mine so that I have two wavy coulters per drill opener which allows better seed opener penetration in hard soil, generally provides more loose soil for better seed coverage. I make a cultivator tillage pass rather then spraying chemical before wheat, so use an IH 620 press wheel drill.

A planter uses a precise metering system to meter out seed. Usually corn, sometimes soybeans. Rows are usually 30", but there are many variations, and splitters are common (to plant beans in 15" rows)

A drill is less precise, usually fluted rolls push the seed out of the bottom of the box into the tubes down to the discs. 7" or so is common spacing, but many variations. No till is just built much heavier. Some have coulters to work the ground ahead of opener discs, some don't.

Air drill uses air to disperse the seed from a common box to all of the row units.

With a small amount of ground to plant to cereal grain (can also plant soybeans), you need one of the following:
-old grain drill and disc. Work the ground, then plant. Think John Deere FB on the low end, Case IH 5300 same thing but newer on the higher end.
-A rental. $10 an acre is very cheap. If you don't have some acreage, you can't come close to owning and maintaining it for that.
-A side job. Buy a Great Plains 1006NT for $28,000. It will do exactly what you want, plant into tilled or no till conditions, and plant a variety of crops. Basically anything except corn.
Josh

Maybe just for clarification, we should determine the differences between a conventional drill and a no-till drill other than weight or build strength?

A conventional drill can have hoe, single disk or double disk seed openers. If it doesn't have a front coulter cart, a notill drill would use either a single disk or hoe opener to break thru the untilled soil. Never heard/seen of a double disk notill without some type of front coulter to open the soil, but all planters can do it. Perhaps because the drill has closer seed spacings it might require a prohibitive amount of machine weight to enable all the double disk openers to penetrate. Conventionals can be configured as end-wheel, mounted or press wheel. Possible to have some combinations such as small press wheels on an end-wheel drill, although generally these classifications are petty much different machines. The notill drills are heavier with a bunch more down pressure possible on the seed openers, which almost always is done with springs. But more simply you have mentioned the really two major differences, weight and build strength. Enough weight so that the seed opener down pressure springs push the openers to the correct depth in the untilled soil rather than just lifting the drill and enough structural strength to withstand the higher force levels generated by notilling.

Thought someone would have called me out for not mentioning a big advantage of the single disk opener is it's ability to cut thru/deal with trash/residue. Hoe openers tend to drag residue particularly if it is long. Double disk openers have trouble with residue hairpinning in the seed trench.

I bought a Great Planes 10 ft No-till drill about 20 yrs ago. Paid for it doing custom work. Don't think it was worth it we worked to hard and to late. It did teach my son the value of a dollar. Charged 10 dollars a acre and the driver got 25% He drove it up into the night a lot of school nights.