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Paul Schlotman, a South Dakota State student heading into his senior year, holds up a championship plaque for scale tractor building. The Hinton, Iowa, native said he gained passion for such work from his ag-focused family.
SIOUX CITY, IOWA — Growing up in farming families in Hinton, Iowa and Wayne, Nebraska, respectively, Paul Schlotman and Ty Grone are fascinated by germination.
Whether it's an actual seed or an idea for a piece of machinery, the two like to watch something grow from relatively little.
Over the course of the past year, as members of South Dakota State University's quarter-scale tractor team, Grone and Schlotman played integral roles as rough plans for a 31-horsepower engine and a set of tires were transformed into a piece of equipment that won their school the 2022 student design championship in Peoria, Illinois.
The international design brought together quarter-scale tractor teams from all over the region.
Grone and Schlotman led a SDSU team of more than a dozen people to finish ahead of the Missouri, Kentucky, Iowa State and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Tractor building competitions usually begin around the start of a school year, when each team gets the same engine and tires to build around. Everything else, from the design to the build to the marketing of the machine is up to the teams.
The SDSU built an all-black tractor with a manual transmission.
"The designing and manufacturing sides are the hardest part," said Grone, a fall 2021 agriculture and biosystems engineering graduate. "Getting that all to work. Merging all of those design ideas together into one is difficult."
Grone's role as a co-captain was to write the reports that were presented to judges. Schlotman took charge of testing, assembly, some design work and cost analysis.
JJ Dooyema, a member of the national champion scale-tractor building team at South Dakota State, tests the equipment at an earlier stage.
At the June banquet to announce the winners for the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers competition, Grone and Schlotman worried they hadn't done enough to win.
"We didn’t get anything at all during the entire awards, and so we’re thinking we did pretty bad, and then we get to overall awards and first is us," said Schlotman, a senior.
"When they mentioned our names it hit us like a brick. We couldn’t believe it," Grone said.
In only one of the eight categories — maneuverability — did SDSU finish outside of the top 10.
The team placed fifth or better in presentation, pull and durability.
Wayne, Nebraska, native Ty Grone (second row, between awards) and Hinton, Iowa, native Paul Schlotman (fifth from right) celebrate after winning the ASABE International Quarter Scale Tractor Student Design Competition.
Both Schlotman and Grone had an interest in mechanical design work long before they enrolled in college.
Schlotman said he spent hours on welding and fabrication projects and became comfortable with working on cars with his dad.
Grone got his start during his junior year at Wayne High School when he took a modeling class. One project worked with Lego bricks.
The process was about finding a part, looking at it, getting all the dimensions and then designing it. When Grone finally went to take a tour of the SDSU campus in Brookings, he realized what he wanted to do with his life.
"I always loved agriculture machinery and (when) I went to take a tour of South Dakota State it was one of the highlights. It clicked for me and I wanted to be a part of that team as soon as I took five steps on campus."
As for Schlotman, he was exposed to scale tractor building at an engineering expo he attended at SDSU.
"Touring the department, I got to learn more about the team," Schlotman said. "(I) tried to be active in attending meetings and help out the upperclassmen … now, being an upper-level classman, I’m helping younger classmen learn."
Now, Grone and Schlotman are furthering their design passion by working with Sioux Falls-based Raven Industries. Grone is a test engineer and Schlotman an intern. This fall at SDSU, Schlotman will be around a scale-tractor team of mostly sophomores as they attempt to defend the championship.
LINCOLN, NEB. - 08/07/2022 - Arianna points to a rocket pop on a ice cream truck at Holmes Lake Park, Sunday, Aug. 7, 2022. NOAH RIFFE, Journal Star
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JJ Dooyema, a member of the national champion scale-tractor building team at South Dakota State, tests the equipment at an earlier stage.
Paul Schlotman, a South Dakota State student heading into his senior year, holds up a championship plaque for scale tractor building. The Hinton, Iowa, native said he gained passion for such work from his ag-focused family.
Wayne, Nebraska, native Ty Grone (second row, between awards) and Hinton, Iowa, native Paul Schlotman (fifth from right) celebrate after winning the ASABE International Quarter Scale Tractor Student Design Competition.
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