General turning, some questions from a newbie.

[picclock]

Hi Kherseth

For what your up to you need both rollers driven for best effect - perhaps a couple of identical gears on one end ? . The other thing I notice is that instead of there being a left and a right hand groove on the cylinders the grooves appear to be the same hand (only going by picture). Left and right hand grooves ensure a shearing action on the grains and having both rollers rotating will drag the grain into the mesh.

I presume you only want to crack the outer layer rather than crush it. You will need to have an adjustment to set the gap correctly for the size of malt you are using. You may get away with coarse gears (large teeth) giving limited adjustment by altering the mesh depth. Alternatively a cross over pulley arrangement may work - if it was me I'd motorise both rollers on principle as I'm a lazy b**ger ;D.

Good luck and don't get discouraged by your initial results. Half the fun is when these things finally work is the satisfaction of knowing you overcame the challenges involved.

Best Regards

picclock

 

[kherseth]

I`ll have to see how i could get both rollers driven, i don`t have much equipment besides the lathe, so making my own gears is basically a no go. The cross threading is not very visible, but there is both left and right hand grooves in both rollers. Will make them deeper as they is no more than 0.5mm now(calculated guess ).

I am thinking of motorizing somewhere in the future, got a big motor with a wormgear on it which sits on top of a 500L milk tank, it was used to stir the milk to prevent it from separating.

And no, I`m not discouraged at all, maybe a little disappointed, but heck, problems are there to be solved!

 

[kherseth]

Found a solution for getting drive on both rollers, just put a O-ring around one of them, the friction is enough to pull grain trough

Will mount a motor if i find it takes too long time cranking it by hand. Would have been cool with a steam engine

Thanks for the help and tips guys, really helpful

Kim

 

[nfk]

Will mount a motor if i find it takes too long time cranking it by hand. Would have been cool with a steam engine

Kim

Or a Hit & Miss! You could smoke your grains at the same time!

I found that just one handle and one moving roller is OK for small batches (let`s say 5Kg of grain).
You could have all the grain crushed in less than 10 minutes. For larger batches stick a motor and a pulley or invite some friends with the excuse of a couple of beers....

Norberto

 

[kherseth]

I did try with just one active roller, but got no grip against the grains. So added that o-ring just to give a little bit of pull on the other roller, works good.

Did rethread the rollers, now one have a right hand, and the other one got a left hand thread on it, i think it works better than the shabby cross thread used earlier. It also increased the gap a little bit, which was also good as i did a wrong measurement while constructing the frame, so the gap was way to small.

I`ll give it a go on a medium batch tomorrow after making the funnel, to see how good it really works.

Sipping a taste from my last batch which i just bottled, a 9%ABV chocolate stout, can`t wait till it have gotten some time in the bottles.