I received my Mower Pro today and got to work setting it up by removing the razor blades and putting on the proper blades, then mapping out a 6000sqft test area. I had no issues and the Yarbo completed without an issue. I had to mow anyway so while Yarbo was dealing with my least favorite area to mow, I dealt with the rest. I peeked in on it a few times and each time it was happily getting covered in lawn rust (I’ll have to deal with that but that’s future Tom’s problem).
I need more time to create each map but for now, man I’m happy.
Oddly enough, my Mower Pro had scratches on the top edge right out of the box. Everything else looked good.
I did coat the bottom with DuPont Non-Stick Dry-Film Lubricant before mowing, I’ve included before and after photos (the white film is the before).
Glad to hear you’re having such positive 1st impressions!! I think the key is to keep iterating your maps until each area is dialed in perfectly, and you have all non moving obstacles properly marked with no-go zones.
I dropped the cut down to 3.5 and sent the mower out again after a full remap, a bit closer to the fence this time. I’m very happy how it turned out. I kicked the cut grass around and did see some long pieces of uncut grass here and there but it was a single pass with 8” overlap. Pretty much the same result as my Toro Timemaster…maybe slightly more uncut pieces than the Toro. What I love is instead of me doing it, Yarbo took care of it and I was able to eat dinner with my family and ran an errand.
I had it set to parallel cut and had a couple “WTF are you doing?” moments in the tighter areas I was watching. I think I’m going to remap and try the adaptive pattern next time to see how that handles things.
I’ll probably check under the Mower Pro tomorrow to see how it looks.
There are definitely always the WTF moments but it sure does beat having to mow it yourself. Love mine. Always need to tweak things here and there as they change things but overall I just send mine out and forget it most of the time.
Hello Tom,
Thank you for sharing your first experience with the Mower Pro — we’re really glad to hear everything went smoothly and that you’re happy with the results so far. Regarding the scratches you mentioned, I’ll make sure to pass this along to the relevant department for review. We’re also looking forward to hearing more of your feedback as you continue using it!
Here are the pictures of the deck after 1/2 an acre mowing with the DuPont Non-Stick Dry-Film Lubricant. 1/4 acre of this would have been semi-wet grass. Not after a rain wet, more the dew hasn’t totally evaporated wet. The small clumps you see fell off when I hit them with my hand-held air duster.
Here is an update as to what the bottom of the Mower Pro looks like about 1.5 acres of mowing and no cleaning in between. No wet mowing except for one not-100%-dry-from-dew morning mow. I think it looks pretty good and it seems easy to clean off. One thing I did notice, the blades are pretty dull already. I don’t have any blade damage, just feeling pretty dull. I have a spare set which I think I’ll swap in so I can sharpen these.
Hi @Tom.C Thanks for sharing this update! To help prevent the blades from dulling quickly, we recommend regularly clearing debris and any possible blockages. When you swap or sharpen them, just make sure Yarbo is powered off and the battery is disconnected, and use a brush or wear protective gloves for safety.
If you have a big open area like that as well as smaller, more complicated area(s), you would probably benefit from making more than one area. There are so many great options for large areas, but for smaller or thinner or more complicated areas, often times there are just a few that make any sense. When you make more than one area, you can have Yarbo do what works best on each without sacrificing the other(s).
I have made a few areas but I realized I need to split some so the Yarbo logic works a bit better. I’ll try to get around to that this weekend and see how it goes. Grass is still growing in PA so I still have some time to play around with mowing.
Mower Pro = SO MUCH BETTER. I have experienced a few places where it gets confused where the old head worked just fine. I can go and make a new map there I think. THANKS for this better tool. Now, what can be done with the old head? Any ideas?
OK, well I was kidding. I mean I gotta believe that the most excellent Yarbo marketing machine would just build them and put them on the store. But if y’all are serious, have one of the folks with a Pro trace a blade and send it as a pdf or better yet just take a high res picture and put a measurement on the pic for scale (or in the text) and I’ll cut some on the machine. It would be a flat blade though, so you would have to put the bends in yourself. And of course warranties may be voided, yada yada…
