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Post by itsallaroundyou on Sept 15, 2009 14:06:04 GMT -5
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Post by FeralOne on Sept 15, 2009 15:40:35 GMT -5
www.blt-inc.com/winn15.htmWe built a prototype at home using a set up similar to this; minus the shakers. I had a vacuum that got damaged during the move from Germany but the motor was still good, so we used that for suctioning the husk and dust (drops it down into a large container), built a table out of scrap wood to hold the unit, PVC for the winnowing tube, then a blow dryer at the bottom of the tube to regulate the airflow. It works pretty good, usually in two passes and sucks very little of the nib into it. We still need to build a "final draft" but I will buy a 12 gallon ShopVac to use on it and make it prettier. This one can do around 5 lbs in about 45 minutes with approximately 80% winnowed nib output. Trying to make the final version better than that, we'll see. I'll try to get some pictures of it later. Andrea
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Post by itsallaroundyou on Sept 15, 2009 16:09:41 GMT -5
that's sounds pretty good...would love to see pics (if you have trouble posting them, feel free to email me directly at oka-road-mail-@-yahoo-.com (just remove all the hyphens)
i assume you're using the crankandstein for cracking? if not what do you use?
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Post by mangiraikos on Sept 15, 2009 19:44:42 GMT -5
At the begining stage, PVC is the way to go I think.
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Post by itsallaroundyou on Sept 26, 2009 18:56:11 GMT -5
well, i went ahead and built the pvc model.......i works but its messy so far.....need a shop vac and some drier hose.....and of course a way to crack the beans into relatively consistent sizes.....
can any one using one of these comment on the feed rate? it seems like i have to pass stuff through in very small increments for it to work efficiently.
that winnower john is building is looking more and more valuable lately....
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Post by itsallaroundyou on Oct 8, 2009 20:14:50 GMT -5
i'm trying to use my PVC winnower and i can't seem to set the blower up so that its not blowing air out the feed tube/port. the obvious problem with this is that it blows stuff out of my hand before it even gets into the winnower.
is this supposed to happen/unavoidable? is my blower up way too high? i'm running a hairdryer fan at 50% power.
i'm thinking about building a feed apparatus that can be loaded, sealed, then dumped. the boards have been pretty quiet lately, but i'm hoping someone who uses one of these or has used one will chime in.
-mike
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Post by itsallaroundyou on Oct 19, 2009 14:55:07 GMT -5
posting for the benefit of anyone else building the same PVC winnower.
i solved the air coming out the feed port by moving my blower about 1.5 feet back (i attached a tube to the port the fan was mounted in)
now i get no air out the feed hole and am able to turn the blower up higher while still maintaining good separation of husk and nibs.
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Post by jtoddm on Apr 23, 2010 18:25:56 GMT -5
Here’s a photo of the winnower we made based on the pvc pipe design. It works extremely well — the nibs fall down and are collected in the bin below. The chaff is sucked into the shop vac and collects neatly into a bucket. Air flow is regulated with two dimmer switches (one for the blower and one for the bucket vac). By adjusting the dimmers we’ve been able to tune it for various nib sizes to minimize nib loss. We pre-sort the nibs, but this step may be unnecessary. Cost about $150 for the parts.
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Post by oaxacalote on Sept 7, 2010 17:49:12 GMT -5
where did you get your hopper? Did you do any tests to see the improvement achieved with the use of shopvac & blower, rather than just one of the two?
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Post by jtoddm on Sept 7, 2010 19:12:44 GMT -5
The hopper is just cobbled together with various duct connectors from Lowe's / Home Depot. Basically they have larger duct shafts and reducing pieces that you can combine to make something looking like a hopper. I'm sure there are better solutions out there, but that was what was on hand when we were buying the rest of the parts.
We originally tried it with just the blower and no shop vac. I didn't work nearly as well, plus the chaff was very messy and would go everywhere. The shop vac is much more effective and has the nice side effect of having no mess. It may work without the blower, we never tried only using the vac.
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Post by oaxacalote on Sept 7, 2010 19:49:08 GMT -5
Good tips and timely - thanks. I'm pricing out our build at the moment and aim to avoid the purgatory of multiple Home Depot visits. I'm considering using a bathroom exhaust fan rather than the Dayton blower (credit this idea to a chap over on chocolatelife). At worst I'm out $13.
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Post by kellymon on Sept 13, 2010 10:27:52 GMT -5
Nice setup:) My winnower is very similar, I use the DWV black pipe etc, but for my blower and vac I use the DeWalt small portable shop vac. 1 end for blowing, the other to collect the chaff. It works very well, 2 passes usually does the job. The standard 1.25 inch sink coupling fits the vacuum hose perfectly. I'm currently working on a feed screw and better control on the suction side, I'll post a few pics when it's done. robert
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Post by jtoddm on Sept 13, 2010 19:59:54 GMT -5
I'd love to see some photos -- the feed screw sounds like a very good idea, it's currently one of the problems with our iteration. We've recently hooked up a vibrating motor near the valve which helps everything fall down, but a feed screw would be a much more elegant solution.
Do you sort before you winnow? We've seen that doing so increased the effectiveness of this design.
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Post by oaxacalote on Sept 16, 2010 15:00:02 GMT -5
Just got ours home-build up and running. Used a $18 bathroom exhaust fan (50 cfm) rather than the Dayton blower and a home vacuum on the other end to pull the chaff out. Put dimmer switches on the fan and vacuum and had very good success cleaning up a couple of pounds of beans. I'll update with a throughput number when we process a larger batch. I'm betting it's not really necessary to pre-sort since we've got the dimmer switches. We were able to run the chaff through at the end and recover the nibs out of it with the right setting.
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Post by Brad on Sept 17, 2010 17:57:59 GMT -5
Picked this up at auction this week for just $14,500 USD, and a very innovative roaster. Refiners are being ordered after Christmas! Attachments:
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