Generations of Farming
and
Innovation

A better way to load a sprayer

Back in the 1980s, I wanted an inductor with a scale in it. I was just looking for an easier way to measure the chemicals. I had started spraying long before that, and it was a dirty job I didn't enjoy, so I was always looking for a better way to reduce exposure. I had even built a closed system for the five-gallon metal cans (if anybody can remember such things), and it was fast.

One of my early memories is of my dad building things in those days and mixing chemicals with no gloves, taking the kind of exposure that was simply normal then. Today my dad has Parkinson's. Was the chemical exposure part of the reason? We don't know. But it is not something we want for anyone.

Many farm wives and daughters help with the spraying these days. I know one who found out she was pregnant in the middle of spraying season and was thankful for Mixmate and the exposure it kept off of her. She has two healthy kids now, and a happy grandfather. I have also had calls from people who are in the ag business, or were, who wish they had had something like Mixmate, because they have suffered some kind of chemical injury. When we are young we are invincible. We don't think we are going to get hurt, and over the long run it can add up. Everyone who handles chemicals carries a little extra risk on top of what we all get from everyday life, and I want that extra part minimized. It is one of the reasons we build Mixmate, and it is something I care about.

I learned at a young age that I had to be efficient. Loading time was the biggest factor in keeping the machine running instead of sitting there waiting to load.

Fast forward to the 2000s. With 4-H and FFA projects to learn from, our sons built a seed tender that measured out the seed and tracked the inventory. It was great in that time frame, when we had different varieties and small plots of refuge. That project later started to evolve into what has become Mixmate.

Brent and Luke with the seed tender at the 2005 Iowa State Fair.

Brent and Luke earned their engineering degrees and went to work in engineering. Brent worked at Claas out of Omaha as the test engineer for North America, where he honed his skills in control systems. Luke worked at Kuhn North America and developed a very large feed mixer, learning factory processes and how big companies approach mechanical design.

In 2010, Brent was ready to start developing a production model of Mixmate. It began as an after-hours project and quickly became full time, with multiple programmers added to the team to develop the software. When the large feed mixer was pretty much done, Luke wanted to come back to farm and help with Mixmate. He was immediately handed the difficult task of syncing data between the Android app and the cloud service. Brent built the control system that makes Mixmate work so incredibly well.

Our first sale came in 2017: a Pro Inductor with four Single Flow bulk inputs. That system is still running today, and I believe it has grown into a stationary mixing plant. The second system started as a flow-only setup with four bulk inputs running simultaneously. The original setup had 1.5-inch meters and valves and would mix the four bulk products in 30 seconds or less. It was scary fast. That system has evolved over time too. It now runs a Fusion Inductor with seven bulk inputs, five of which run at once, plus two 3-inch feeds through two 3-inch pumps with a 4-inch output to load a 2,000-gallon Hagie sprayer. It's not scary fast anymore. It's crazy fast.

We are farmers and engineers, and we've gotten our hands dirty developing this product. Mixmate is not a me-too product. Our patented inductors are unique in the world. We see things differently, and we solve things differently. This is not a solution looking for a problem. It's quite the opposite: a solution developed out of a need in agriculture and on our own farm. Simplicity, safety, and reliability proven on the farm carry straight over to other markets, such as industrial and lawn care. Our modular approach is surprisingly cost-effective compared to other large mixing plants and custom-built systems.

Safety is a big feature of Mixmate, but it would be a hard sell if it were the only one. Our goal is to make the whole mixing process better, from the records to the handling to the speed. Very often speed pays for the efficiency a farm needs, and the safety comes along with it. That is also why we keep working on value, so more people can afford a system.

Be Blessed!

Doug Applegate

Praxidyn, a family owned and founded business.