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Post by Brad on Apr 14, 2008 13:27:45 GMT -5
I have just purchased the cracker, the winnower, AND a stand that both can be bolted to in order to work in unison.
Price was about $6,600 USD for all 3 pieces, including shipping.
I will keep you all posted as to the effectiveness of the combined unit for batches of nibs in the range of 20kg per hour.
Delivery is scheduled for 6-8 weeks.
Brad
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Post by nuthouse on Apr 14, 2008 13:49:43 GMT -5
I agree with Seneca about pricing: $4-700. I'd rather buy it from you if I can get it at a lower price. Anything that winnows 25-50 lbs an hour is still 3-10x faster than me and my hair dryer! And well worth the cost. Nuthouse
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Post by Randy on Apr 14, 2008 18:47:18 GMT -5
I use the Krankenstein and I just made a winnower that works well for me. I bought a 5 foot section of 3" pcv, a cap for the end and a t joint and a large funnel for about $15. I drilled a hole in the cap to fit my shop vac, mounted it on one end and mounted the t joint halfway down after sawing the pcv in half.. I pour my cracked nibs and shells into the funnel stuck in the t joint. I point the pcv pipe downhill. The clean nibs rattle out the bottom into a bowl and the shells goup into the shopvac. I takes 2 or 3 passes, but the nibs are clean.
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Post by Brad on Apr 15, 2008 0:14:14 GMT -5
One thing to keep in mind everyone, is labour. Most home made "commercial" versions require a person to operate the machine 100% of the time.
The one Seneca mentioned above (and I researched further and then purchased), has a hopper attached to the top (well... mine will). I just dump the beans in and walk away to do other things. The machine cracks them and winnows them, with little or no involvement from the operator once the cracker settings are correct.
While in the short term you save a few bucks on the initial construction of the machine, the savings are quickly eaten up by having to babysit the machine.
Example: I have two refiners that each make 120lbs of chocolate every 30 hours. That means that every two days I need to crack and winnow approximately 200lbs of beans to make 240lbs of chocolate.
Best case scenario, the manual machine does 40lb per hour and the CPS combination does 40lbs per hour.
Manually I would have to tend a machine for 5 hours, every two days for a total of 50 hours per month, based on 20 working days in a month.
Every month, my cost as a small business owner would be approximately 50 hours X $100 per hour = $5,000 Multiply that by 12 months, and your manual machine will cost you $60,000 in lost time.
Conversely, if you spend the money on a machine that's designed to require little or no supervision, you can see how you make your money back in spades in a very short period of time.
Having said all that, one could argue that they could have a $10/hr employee winnow the beans. That's possible. However, next to roasting it's one of the most important tasks - one you're not going to trust to a flunkee.
Sometimes it's VERY worth it to spend the money up front and free up your time. After all, time is money in business, and it doesn't matter whether it's small business or big business.
Just economic food for thought everyone.
Brad.
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Post by Sebastian on Apr 15, 2008 11:18:38 GMT -5
Brad, once you get the machine, I've love to know it's yield. Ie if you put 10 lbs of beans in, do you get 7 lbs of nibs out? 8 lbs? etc
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Post by Alchemist on Apr 15, 2008 11:30:24 GMT -5
Agreed Brad on many points. It is one reason I have not pushed most of the homemade winnowers. They take as much time as doing it by hand. Just not as much effort.
My goal is one that you load and walk away. Otherwise, what is the point IMO.
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Post by Brad on Apr 15, 2008 12:23:08 GMT -5
I'll make sure to provide some good feedback once I get the machine. Lord knows I've got enough beans to test with! 3,000lbs takes up a lot of space in my garage right now!
It will be a few weeks though, so please be patient, while my new toys are shipped!
Over and out.
Brad.
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Post by gilgamesh on Apr 21, 2008 14:09:36 GMT -5
$400 sounds doable. I hate winnowing inside in the winter! What a mess, and inefficient. I lose nibs, precious nibs!
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Post by Brad on Aug 2, 2008 23:41:15 GMT -5
WINNOWER UPDATE:
The Cracker/Fanner I purchased for WAAAY TOO MUCH MONEY FROM CPL Ltd. finally arrived after a long wait.
I purchased it from Commodity Processing Limited in the UK.
It arrived late by almost a month.
It arrived beat up by shipping.
In the first hour the bolts holding the fan loosened and caused the machine to stall.
There were no plugs on the cords, and the wire coloring is different in the UK, than North America, so I had to send an email to CPL to get a wiring translation.
There was no oil in the transmission of the cracker. (There should have been)
There was no documentation to tell me what oil to use.
The design of the fanner stand is downright stupid. Any idiot can see that there's no place for the nibs and shells to either drop or be caught by a bowl. after a handful of beans passes through the machine you have to stop and brush nibs away from the bottom of the chute, or they back up and stall the fanner. Dumb, Dumb, Dumb.
The most I could winnow was about 25lb of beans in an hour, and during that hour I was completely covered in dust from it blowing back out the input chute and into my face, and my girlfriends face, who was trying to help and prevent me from swearing more and throwing the whole damned machine into the alley behind the shop.
The input chute for the cracker was small and beans often logded in it and piled up, which caused me to have to stop the machine, jiggle the beans loose and start the machine again.
This means that it's a person's full time job babysitting this piece of dung.
Last but not least, I had to pass the beans through the cracker and into the fanner, AND THEN pass the nibs through the fanner a second time because it didn't remove all of the shell.
By the time all was winnowed, the nib to shell ratio was about 31% shell and dust and 69% nibs. Give or take 1% and it's about the same as I achieved from my home machine.
In all, this was a very disappointing purchase, and a TOTAL waste of money. I should have built my own to start with.
I'm going to build my own.
Sorry to disappoint those of you who were waiting for good results.
Brad
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Post by ndmanux on Oct 7, 2008 14:19:23 GMT -5
Brad, Sorry to hear about your bad experience with CPL. Did you ever get in touch with them to see if their machine has been used successfully for winnowing cacao beans? And are you still bent on building your own? I am trying to decide myself which road I should follow i.e. build/buy
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Post by Brad on Oct 8, 2008 1:17:06 GMT -5
The CPL machine is advertised as a lab-style machine specifically for cocoa beans.
I am most certainly constructing my own.
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Post by holycacao on Oct 9, 2008 13:12:57 GMT -5
Has anyone tried using the clipper prelude 526 or 324? I saw Clay mention it on his website. It has schematic drawings on the company's website. Looks like the same principle as a cocoa winnower. www.clipperseparation.com/pdf/prelude.pdf
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Post by Brad on Oct 9, 2008 23:34:07 GMT -5
Wow....
That looks almost exactly what I had in mind for a design.... except mine was a lot less sophisticated, and had the airflow after the screens instead of before the screens.
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Post by Brad on Jan 7, 2009 1:44:46 GMT -5
Hey everybody; I've mentioned that I was going to build a winnower, and seeing as all the bowling alleys were closed over the holidays (that, and the P.O.S. I purchased from the UK crapped out) I decided to spend some time in the garage building my dream winnower. I used it for the first time today in a production environment, and it works beautifully!! In just 45 minutes I winnowed 150lbs of nibs and shell into 124lbs of nibs, so thoroughly that I had to look for shell. The best part is that it's a sealed unit, so there's no dust in my chocolate shop at all. The material cost to build: $550.00. Time to build: 8 hours Skill Required: Common Sense Tools Required: Duct Tape, Jig Saw, cordless drill/screwdriver, wire feed welder, tin snips Materials list: 3 - 150CFM variable speed fans 3 - Speed switches 1 - extension cord 30 - #8 3/4 inch wood screws 1 - Sheet of 1/2 inch plywood 1 - tablesaw stand 4 - feet of galvanized metal duct 1 - 570CFM dust collector (like for a woodworking shop) 6 - hoseclamps 14 - feet of dust collection hose The design is fabulous, because all of the beans and shell are poured into a 4 foot long X 10 inch wide X 10 inch deep, verticle rectangular box, and fall straight through. Along the way, they cross through airflow blown through them, which seperates the shell from the nib, and blows the shell UP a small ramp and out of an opening into the ductwork, where the shell falls away and is sucked up by the dust collector. The box is sealed and there are a series of "ramps" in the box which help slow the fall of the nibs and shell, and direct the nibs and shell INTO the airflow, allowing you to turn the fans up, and blow more shell away. The nibs fall through the bottom and into a bin under the box. All moving parts are located outside of the box, and because the entire unit is sealed, the only place dust ends up is in the dust collector, which has a big fibre cloth filter which prevents the dust from re-entering the air. If a fan fails, it can be very easily replaced without having to disassemble anything. The best part however is the Percentage of loss, which is VERY low compared to all other methods I have yet to see (16.4% loss, as opposed to almost 30% before!). I use a cracker to break the beans and shell into very small pieces, which means the airflow necessary to carry large pieces of shell isn't needed, which is usually the cause of carrying small nibs too. In my case only the small shell pieces and dust are removed. As production volume increases, all I need to do is build more boxes and then affix to them an automated feeding system - MUCH better than the $250,000 I was quoted for a winnower that will crack and winnow 100kg per hour. My machine is at close to 90 per hour and cost me less than a thousand bucks. Best regards everyone. ;D P.S. I am sharing this information in the spirit of encouraging other people to share. I believe this is more than enough information to create your own if you use your imagination. Call me fickle if you like.
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Post by cheebs on Jan 7, 2009 9:07:54 GMT -5
Not bad, brad!
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