Grain Mill Motor

Id like to find a decent way to put a motor on my barley crusher but I am conflicted on which way to go.

I like the simplicity of the drill, however I am also thinking about maintaining a constant low rpm. An eletric motor would give me this. The problem then becomes which eletric motor to go with.

A dc motor would be nice as a low rpm/high torqe option, direct drive method, but I think its the most expensive option, not sure about that though.

I have recently found this on ebay, but the RPMs seem to be a bit on the high side. Would I need any additional electrical hardware with this and would there be a way to tone down the rpms with this.


The belt driven ac motor is also a nice option, but I have heard that bearings tend to wear out.

basicly I am looking for a nice system that does not include a drill drive, but if its more expensive than the drill drive method then I will just go with that.

Any and all ideas about this, please respond.

I think a lot of people followed this tutorial, I did and really like mine. I found a suitable motor at an industrial salvage shop. recently I was looking at a garage door opener with the cover off, and the gearing on the motor looked like it brought the RPMs of the motor down to ~200RPM which is a good speed for milling grains.

http://byo.com/build-it-yourself/item/1166-motorize-your-grain-mill-projects

If i remember correctly the barley crusher site recommends running their mills at 500rpm. I moved to a motor basically because how am i to know what RPMs i'm running my drill at. I want consistence.

The motor is 3450 rpm and luckily came with a switch already. So i use a power strip as the on/off and the switch at the base of the motor as a main power so if someone plugs it in it doesn't just start up. The pulley on the motor is 1.5in. and the sheave is 12in which puts my RPMs at around 432. I use a pulley calculator online to figure that out.

Things i had to buy
motor 45 bucks on craigslist
sheave
bushing (to allow the sheave to fit on the crusher)
belt

Those things i got at grainger for somewhere around 50 bucks. There is another thread the details it better than i have. I used it to help me put this together. it was also the cheaper option if i recall.

So here is mine without and with a guard.

I bought this 90 volt dc gearmotor for $25 off e-bay

beaksnbeer said:

i bought this 90 volt dc gearmotor for $25 off e-bay

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beeksnbeer thats a sweet motor, but I dont think there are many of them out there at that price. I see them now at over 100 usd

johns said:

beeksnbeer thats a sweet motor, but I dont think there are many of them out there at that price. I see them now at over 100 usd

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Thats why i ended up with the setup i have. The motors everyone else was using where no longer available or i couldnt find the at a good price.

Best of luck to you. I was pretty anxious when i was putting mine together.

Your setup is impressive also. I am not really sure I want to fork out over 100 dollars for a motor setup to run my mill. I would rather that money on grain. . However if I could find a motor like beeknbeer, that might be the way to go. I am not sure it will happen.

Can I ask you or anyone else how do you calculate the torque on a pully system running a 1750 motor?