Near Intersection of I-35 & I-90 Southern Mn. | This appears to be a standard Raven hydraulic control valve. I had one of these on my former Hagie STS 10 of about that age. The top portion was made by Raven. The actual hydraulic valve on the bottom was made by the Brand Company. The Brand valves are available with a hand lever on them for manual control. The Raven portion just replaces the hand lever with an electric motor, gearbox and circuit boards to change the position of the valve.
This means it may be possible to just replace the "top" portion and reuse the bottom Brand portion. Of course, purchasing an entire assembly is also an option.
If you are using a Raven controller, it should be setup as Standard and not Fast, Fast Close or PWM. If you are using another brand of controller again the controller should be set to Standard. This setup is expecting 12VDC and ground. With one polarity, the motor turns clockwise, with the other polarity the motor turns counter clockwise. This valve will not work properly if the controller is set to another setting such as Fast (gives very short shots of power) or PWM (gives continuous extremely short shots of power to cause a PWM valve to hover partially open).
One way to test the motor/circuit board is to unplug it and run it from a 12VDC source such as a loose battery or 12V and Ground from the Hagie. Sometimes just grabbing a loose 12V battery is easier. Connect 12VDC and ground to the 2 pin connector. The motor may start and run for a while and then stop when the cam on the gearbox valve stem pushes a limit switch on top. If the motor does not start, the valve may already be at one extreme and the cam is breaking the circuit.
In either case, reverse the leads, the motor should run, this time turning in the opposite direction and run until the cam contacts the other limit switch. At that point it should stop again. Going from one extreme to the other should take about 8 seconds. This is because the shaft is purposely geared down by the gearbox toward the bottom so the actual hydraulic valve turns slowly. If the motor behaves as described here, you should be able to observe and listen to its behavior. You can then decide its condition.
It is fairly common with valves of that age that the brushes in the motor are worn or sticky or that the limit switches are not moving freely. You might be able to salvage them with some contact cleaner but given the age, it probably would be more reliable to replace.
I traded off my Hagie STS-10 for a somewhat newer STS-12. The STS-10 used a valve like yours. The STS-12 uses a PWM type control valve which has a different external appearance. With my STS-12, I need to set my Ag Leader up as PWM control rather than Hydraulic Servo such as I did with the Hagie STS-10. There are some advantages to using a PWM type valve although I got along well with the Standard hydraulic valve in the STS-10.
The PWM approach splits the range up into something like 2^8 (256) steps that represent how far the valve is opened. This is often expressed as what is called Duty Cycle which may be listed as a percent. Most controllers when set in the PWM mode will allow the operator to observe the current PWM value being sent to the valve. In other words, the operator can see "how far open the valve is". This can be very useful for troubleshooting or setting various limits. For example, with my Hagie and the PWM valve, I can set the Duty Cycle I want the system to maintain when all the sections are OFF in the sprayer. This keeps the solution pump pumping at that speed to provide agitation while stopped or turning around on a headland. This also means the pump will be pumping so that when application resumes, flow is available immediately and can then ramp up/down as necessary to achieve the target rate. If I have the value set too low, there might be a delay before the pump gets rev'd up again to deliver the target rate. In other words when application resumes, there may be an unacceptable delay. I do have a separate pump switch to break the circuit so I can stop the pump altogether as necessary with an empty tank etc.
I'm not suggesting that you change to a PWM valve but hoping to inform how the PWM control approach works.
Edited by tedbear 12/21/2024 10:27
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Raven hydraulic rate control valve
