My FULL-ON electric build thread

Looking very good, I can't wait to see more pics!

Here is the control panel progress so far:


The front panel has so many complicated cutouts that I decided I will take it in and have it waterjetted:


And here are a couple of models showing the inside and front panel:





The little rectangles above my selector switches and on the right hand side of the front panel are these awesome LCD switches:


They were part of a old prototype interface at my work and were being thrown out. Spent a week or so getting them up and running before I decided to add them to the control panel. Haven't quite figured out exactly how each will be used but for starters they will be lit up and used instead of LED indicators.

This is big. I'm thinking you can recuperate cost by giving tours of your basement.

Wow! Can we get a close up shot of the brazed tri-clamp. One of my biggest conundrums in the rebuild of my system is finding/building a sanitary (or as close as possible) chiller, so any help on that end would be great

MarcMTL said:

This is big. I'm thinking you can recuperate cost by giving tours of your basement.

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I think it would take quite a while to recuperate...

thelorax121 said:

Wow! Can we get a close up shot of the brazed tri-clamp. One of my biggest conundrums in the rebuild of my system is finding/building a sanitary (or as close as possible) chiller, so any help on that end would be great

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I didn't take very many photos but here is one that shows the brazing a little closer. It still needed to be cleaned up a bit after this photo was taken. It was a pretty easy brazing in general.

Thanks, that helps. What did you use to drill out the cap since the metal is so thick? Also did you secure the tri clamp cap so that it was set on top of the npt fitting, then braze by focusing most of the flame on the nptport and just work your way around. If so how did you avoid any downward dripping? Pardon my ignorance, but I am just that when it comes to brazing Thanks!

thelorax121 said:

Thanks, that helps. What did you use to drill out the cap since the metal is so thick? Also did you secure the tri clamp cap so that it was set on top of the npt fitting, then braze by focusing most of the flame on the nptport and just work your way around. If so how did you avoid any downward dripping? Pardon my ignorance, but I am just that when it comes to brazing Thanks!

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No problem, I don't mind helping at all. I used this M35 1/2" step bit from eBay. I purchased three step bits from the same seller and they have all been amazing for stainless steel. Still no signs of wearing out and I have beat the hell out of them. Use slow speeds and firm constant pressure plus a good cutting oil. Stop the drilling if the piece gets too hot.

For the brazing I took these steps:
1. Sand both mating surfaces with 220grit.
2. Clean and degrease/de-oil.
3. Place drilled cap and apply jig shown above.
4. Apply brazing paste flux on the exterior of the cap and the threading.
5. Gently heat a broader area around the connection with a torch.
6. Gradually apply more directed heat at the exterior connection point between the two items until the filler begins to flow.
7. The filler will avoid flowing into "colder" areas and is drawn to the hotter areas so I use the torch to draw the filler all the way around the connection and apply more if needed.
8. Quench the brazement with a soaked rag to clean the flux residue.

So in general there are less issues in brazing with dripping or flowing in undesired areas due to the higher temps required. It takes a bit of practice and I wouldn't make your first attempt on a $100 chiller.

Things are moving along, few more crucial items to finish before I can start tuning the controls.

Here is a picture of four of the LCD keys in action (hard to photograph well):


These four keys were part of an existing board and enclosure. I will be creating a circuit board for the 5 keys above the switches on my front panel.

Speaking of the switches they all arrived last week, going to take a bit of work to get them wired up. I plan to get the front panel water jetted later this week so I can begin installing these.

The switches without any contact blocks will be modified to use with potentiometers for manual element duty cycle or pump speed control. Below is a model of how they will be built.


My temp probes have been built and tested, everything is looking good so far:


The HEX pot arrived and I built the stand for it:

The pot is elevated so one of my pumps can be placed underneath it. Still needs to be secured to the tabletop. The immersion chiller I plan to build the HEX coil from should be back in stock sometime during February according to Midwest Supplies.

If you're looking for a stainless wort chiller you can snag one from here, well built and the price isn't bad either. As an added bonus they also sell rolls of tubing.

wyzazz said:

If you're looking for a stainless wort chiller you can snag one from here, well built and the price isn't bad either. As an added bonus they also sell rolls of tubing.

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I actually contacted NY Supply to see if they could make a custom coil from their 1/2" ID tubing. Unfortunately they don't make custom items. My guess is, just like many of the other suppliers, they source the fab work to vendors overseas. Midwest's coil is exactly the right size for my tank and will only need a few custom bends that I should be able to handle on my own. Thanks for the suggestion!

Where did you get your switches from?

bgarino said:

Where did you get your switches from?

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www.elecdirect.com. I purchased a ton of various items for my control and power panels from them. Very pleased with their shipping speed and communications and price.

For the switches you have to buy the actuator, collar, and contact blocks separately.

The Link does not work??? Are they still around??

Is this it? http://www.elecdirect.com/

bgarino said:

Is this it? http://www.elecdirect.com/

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Correct. It is elecdirect. I sent from my phone without checking the link.

great thread, and epic build! Please post, when it happens, how you did with the waterjeting, and what it cost. I'm presently getting quotes on cutting a stainless door for a control panel (much, much less elaborate than yours), and am curious how it prices out around the country. I've gotten two quotes for $190 and $290 for 13 round holes and 4 square cutouts for PIDS in the Boston area. Good luck with your continued build.

Man this is an awesome build. A buddy from work and I are in the starting stages of going all electric. Excited to see how this turns out!

Any updates? Love this build...

Sorry it has been so long since an update but these have been some busy few months.

nhwrecker said:

great thread, and epic build! Please post, when it happens, how you did with the waterjeting, and what it cost. I'm presently getting quotes on cutting a stainless door for a control panel (much, much less elaborate than yours), and am curious how it prices out around the country. I've gotten two quotes for $190 and $290 for 13 round holes and 4 square cutouts for PIDS in the Boston area. Good luck with your continued build.

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The local company for waterjetting fell through so I started looking online. Found Big Blue Saw out of Atlanta that has been responsive and the prices were very reasonable (~$80 for the cutouts). As a bonus they also cut/laser engrave acrylic sheets to be used as labels or indicators (~$35). I reworked the my panel cut outs a bit for better tolerances and then created an overlay for the acrylic labels, it will be brushed stainless in look with black inlays:



I hope to ship the door to them early next week to be cut.

The circuit board design for the other components in the brewery has consumed much of the last two months of spare time. I sent all of the PCB designs off to be printed, should get them back in 2-4 weeks (BatchPCB).

First is the brewery controller:



Provides me all of the connectors and accessories needed from the microcontroller powering the sensors, valves, and elements.

Next is the breakout board for the LCD switches I mentioned earlier:





This provides a programmable LCD key for each tank and pump as well as connection points for the other front panel switches and indicators.

Finally, while I was creating the circuits I finished the controller board for my motorized ball valves:





With this valve controller I should be able to command and detect any position from 0-100% as well as detect manual position overrides.

There haven't been many updates to the brewing room itself yet as much of my manual labor time has been devoted to the yard. After these circuit boards and front panel are done the last major component for me to finish is the heat exchanger coil.

Wow what a system. I am just going to start hating you right now, if that is ok with you. I will probably get over it in time until I think about you and your touch screen controlled brew system then jealousy will show up again I will have to hate you a little more.

I may have missed it somewhere in this thread, but what touchscreen are you using?

Joker said:

Wow what a system. I am just going to start hating you right now, if that is ok with you.

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That is fine with me, I see things on this forum all the time that I "hate". Whole lot of awesome running around these boards.

wubears71 said:

I may have missed it somewhere in this thread, but what touchscreen are you using?

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The touchscreen is an older panel pulled from a Kodak photo kiosk or similar. It is made by ELO and is similar to the 1537L. 1024 x 768 Resolution, it was around $40 on eBay a year or two ago.

TheFlyingBeer said:

The touchscreen is an older panel pulled from a Kodak photo kiosk or similar. It is made by ELO and is similar to the 1537L. 1024 x 768 Resolution, it was around $40 on eBay a year or two ago.

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Thanks.

I thought mototrized ball valves, or at least the ones in home brew rigs, only went fully open or fully closed. Is the controller board handling some type of actuator or have you gone and bought actual control valves? Are all the valves, apart from the solenoid ones, going to have this functionality? Great work on the PCB's!!

Brewer Gerard said:

I thought mototrized ball valves, or at least the ones in home brew rigs, only went fully open or fully closed. Is the controller board handling some type of actuator or have you gone and bought actual control valves? Are all the valves, apart from the solenoid ones, going to have this functionality? Great work on the PCB's!!

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Thanks. The actuators for my ball valves in my system will be modified Johnson Controls VA9104's. The actuators as I purchased them had very simple control interface with two 24VAC inputs, one for clockwise rotation and one for CCW. The blue actuator housing (can be seen in the last picture above) had plenty of space to insert my own control board for proportional control. The downside is the valves are slower than those typically used in homebrewing, 60s vs 7-10s.

The controller will use a magnetic position sensor with a magnet connected to the gear system to determine the valve position. Two phototriacs will switch the motor to either CW or CCW. Each valve will communicate with the main brewery controller over a separate I2C bus. The long red button in the last picture above disengages the valve gearing and will push a switch to send a signal to the controller that the valve has been moved manually.

Remind me to send you a PM when I start planning for world domination!

l3asturd said:

Remind me to send you a PM when I start planning for world domination!

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Narf! (Pinky and the Brain for the older members of this forum)

There has been a ton of activity towards finally being able to brew with this system. The control panel door was sent out early last week to be waterjetted, no idea on how long it will take. The circuit boards are on their way back from the boardhouse and should be in hand by the end of this week or early next. All of the components for the circuit boards arrived over the last couple days, can't wait to start soldering.

I bit the bullet and decided to use a RO/DI water system. Purchased a prebuit unit from BulkReefSupply and couldn't be happier with the build quality of the system. The filter stages will fill up a 18 gallon plastic RV/boat holding tank that will be used on brew days for the HLT, MLT, etc. I have been building a "cabinet" behind the wash sink to hold the RO/DI and tank system. Here is my progress so far:

Cabinet frame in place, plywood backboard mounted to studs.


Sink in place, doors and shelves mounted:


Doors open showing the RO/DI setup. 18 Gallon tank will go in the upper right compartment, it is on back order for a couple of weeks at least.


Everything still needs to be sanded, stained, and sealed but overall it has been a great experience doing some wood working for the brewery.

The water supply solenoid valves (SV1, SV3, & SV4 for those keeping track) will be placed in the lower right hand corner of this cabinet. Outlets will be on the right hand side and will be connected to the tanks and chiller.

After the random purchases this week the last major component to I have yet to nail down is the HERMS HEX coil. I will hopefully be buying it soon. There is light at the end of this incredibly long build tunnel. I am optimistic and have set a goal of brewing in some limited capacity by early June. The software will take a lot of time to build and refine, until then I will slowly implement new features.

Subscribed

StainlessBrewing said:

Subscribed

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I look forward to receiving the custom heat exchanger coil inlet tubes you built for me!


In an attempt to provide more regular updates I have a bunch of news to share.

Over the last two weeks parts have been arriving nearly daily. So far the most exciting parts to show up are the circuit boards and the acrylic overlay for the control panel.

The laser cut/engraved acrylic panel from Big Blue Saw arrived on Friday and looks awesome! Simon from BBS even included all of the cutout items in a bag with the shipment. The negative of the large cutout for the touchscreen may come in handy in the future.


The relatively poor image quality of my phone doesn't do the engraving justice... it looks exactly like my 3D model.

The door I sent in should be shipped any day now, then the real fun will begin with assembling the front panel.

As I mentioned the circuit boards arrived from BatchPCB and I was pleasantly surprised to find out that they shipped multiple copies of each board even though I only ordered one of each. My guess is they had spare space on the panels to fill... quite the added bonus (especially if I mess something up).



I quickly got to work putting the main controller together. Solder paste stencils were ordered from OHARARP. Solder paste is spread across the stencil and is filled into the holes where surface mount pads are located.



The small components were then carefully placed into the correct locations. After placement the board was baked in a toaster oven to get the paste to reflow. Finally, all of the through hole components were soldered with a regular hand held iron.


I think it is looking really good, just need the relays in the lower right corner of the board for it to be completed.

I have started to implement the software for the control board, so far so good.

The ball valve control boards fit like a glove, I was very relieved.

It will be a while until I start working on those. The first few beers brewed will have manual control of the valves. I haven't brewed for ever, it is a race to the finish now.

love the logos and the rdwhahb on your boards. nice touch

Tinga said:

love the logos and the rdwhahb on your boards. nice touch

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Thanks. I am hoping the RDWHAHB will calm me down while troubleshooting the boards or code, but it might just get me drunk.

TheFlyingBeer said:

I look forward to receiving the custom heat exchanger coil inlet tubes you built for me!

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No close up pics of that thing. It won't match the beautiful rig you got going here. If your not happy send it back and we'll start fresh from a new and not a pre-coiled...coil. I think that may have been another issue with it too being that it was already at 10".

I know this should be obvious from the thread but can i just ask are all 7 of the ball valves going to have 0-100% flow control & does that mean a stepper motor is required at each one?

I think given the fact that this project has been underway for less than a year you've achieved an awful lot in a very short time span:rockin:

Brewer Gerard said:

I know this should be obvious from the thread but can i just ask are all 7 of the ball valves going to have 0-100% flow control & does that mean a stepper motor is required at each one?

I think given the fact that this project has been underway for less than a year you've achieved an awful lot in a very short time span:rockin:

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Yeah, each of the 7 ball valves are planned to use one of the blue actuator shown. For clarification, the actuators use a small 24VAC motor and gearing system, not a stepper.

This plan has been slowly building momentum for the last 2 years or so. It will be nice to finally get some AG brews run through it.

Can we be friends?. I am sure we can be BEST friends!! really I promise.........

But seriously can we???

(this is blowing my mind!!!!)
jokes aside (and im sure this was mentioned before) but, what would be the cost if I where to comission a system like this?

(edit: stupid internet)

DannyD said:

Can we be friends?. I am sure we can be BEST friends!! really I promise.........

But seriously can we???

(this is blowing my mind!!!!)
jokes aside (and im sure this was mentioned before) but, what would be the cost if I where to comission a system like this?

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Makes me think of the Dog from the movie Up.

This build would be hard to put a price tag on as many of the components were snapped up through deals that came along at the right time. For example, most of my tri-clamp parts were purchased on eBay and the timing/pricing of those can be hit or miss. One day you might find a Tee for $10 or if you wanted to purchase it retail it could go for $35. There is thousands of dollars tied up in items just purchased regularly and it is hard to keep track of all the little items purchased through many trips to Lowes or HD. I am really in this for the adventure/challenge, there are obviously many ways to produce an awesome system without some of the costs I have incurred.

That being said, I have built up the front panel potentiometer assemblies:


Still waiting on the front door to begin assembling everything. Over time more items on the control board are being tested. The solenoid valve control circuits work well and so does the serial port for comms with the PC. Next on the software hitlist is the 1-wire comms for the temp sensors.

You gonna use your peristaltic pump with this system?

l3asturd said:

You gonna use your peristaltic pump with this system?

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Oh yeah, there are going to be two of them running for sparge and transfer. You can't see it but under the blue microcontroller board on my controller is a small secondary microcontroller that will be used as the motor controller for the pumps. This keeps the motor timing unaffected by the other control operations.

Thought I would make another quick update today. The wood cabinet/self setup I made will have solenoid valve controlled outlets for the HLT, HEX tank, and plate chiller.

Here is the valve I am using for two of those (slightly different model for the HLT):

It has 1/2" NPS threads on each end.

I am mounting them to the lower right wall of the cabinet using some electrical back boxes and cover plates as they fit well and didn't cost much. Here is what it should look like on the outside:


And on the inside:


Each valve requires 12VDC to open which will be controlled by my main brewery controller.