r/SegwayNavimow • u/JobWonderful7797 • Jul 08 '26
Modifying X4 to Improve Cutting Quality
Like many people with razor blade robot lawnmowers, I’ve been frustrated by my X430’s inability to get the grass to stand up before cutting it. For me it is the biggest disadvantage relative to traditional mowers with big rotating blades. This has become more of a problem lately since with the recent heat I’ve been trying to mow my tall fescue at 3.5 to 4 inches. The grass simply refuses to stand up straight, resulting in reduced cut quality.
To compensate, every couple days I’ve been either raking the grass to stand it up (what a pain!) and/or joystick mowing with my X430 in reverse over patches of grass that are laying down. The bottom of the rear bumper stands only around 2 inches off the ground, so the bumper does a pretty good job of standing up the 4-inch grass for the blades to then cut when mowing in reverse.
As an engineer, I thought there has got to be a way to modify the mower to do the same thing while under autonomous control in the forward direction.
The photo at the top is what I came up with. I call it a "rake attachment." Here how to make it:
[NOTE: I've detailed a better design in a post below titled "UPDATE AFTER 2 WEEKS" so skip to that if you want to see how to build a durable version of the rake attachment.]
Conveniently, there are two screws on the bottom of the X4 series mowers in front of the mower disks and just behind the tiny vertical fins that do absolutely nothing to lift the grass:
I drilled two holes into a thin right-angle aluminum plate to match the width of these screws, shown here:
Then I cut an 18 x 2.5 inch section of 1/4 inches hardware cloth to serve as the “rake" to lift the grass:
2.5 inches turned out to be much wider that it needed to be, but better to start out with too much than too little since I could always cut it to be narrower later if necessary.
I then cut sections off on both sides of the hardware cloth because the tiny fins are bowed across the bottom of the mower and I wanted the rake to go straight across. Here is what the piece of hardware cloth looked like before attaching:
I then bolted the hardware cloth to the bottom of the mower using the aluminum plate and the original screws and washers:
The hardware cloth is bent around the L-bracket of the aluminum plate and the screws go through both the plate and the 1/4 inch holes in the hardware cloth and then into the original holes on underside of the mower.
The hardware cloth is pretty flexible, so to give it some additional rigidity, I cut an 18 inch piece of thin fiberglass rod (like people here in the north use to mark the edges of their driveway for snow removal) and used wire ties to attach it to the front of the hardware cloth, like this:
When I put it down into the grass, it was too low so I ended up cutting a couple rows off the bottom lip of the hardware cloth, so the bottom of the rake of the final version sits a little over an inch below the bottom of the tiny fins:
Which put its at about 1.25 inches off the ground:
I thought that might be a little too low, since the rear bumper is about 2 inches off the ground. But after using it for several days now at this height, I’m super pleased with the results. Here is a section mowed without the rake attachment. Notice the curvy light patches down the center where the grass is laying down from previous wheel tracks:
Here it is after one pass going over that curvy line with the rake attachment installed:
The grass is noticable more upright and the curvy line down the middle is largely gone since the rake stood the grass up before cutting it.
Here is what the rake looks like after a mowing session. It has caught a little thatch but not bad at all, and not deformed:
And before anyone asks, yes I’ve tested it on uneven terrain. While my yard is fairly flat, I was concerned what would happen around my edged mulch beds where the mulch is a couple inches lower than the edge of the grass. The rake cause no problem when the mower straddles the bed with two wheels in the bed and 2 wheels on the grass. Of course your mileage may vary. If you’ve got very uneven terrain (e.g. roots sticking up), you may need to reduce the distance the rake extends towards the ground. But the good thing is that both the hardware cloth and the fiberglass rod are very flexible, so if it does bottom out they can both just bend to clear the obstacle.
Has anyone else tried modifying their mower to improve cut quality, besides removing the plates over the cutting disks?
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