user 338926
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- May 1, 2023
- Messages
- 213
- Reaction score
- 183
Many years ago I made 2 grain mills at work. Gave one to my brother and use mine to this day. It's pretty nice, and I see there's complaints on here about commercially available mills which fail to mill properly, and degrade over time it appears. I never had that issue.
I do however want to add gears to synchronize the two rollers, and when I built them, I didn't think to add enough shaft length on which to attach gears to accomplish that. I've sort of considered welding an appendage on... But the shafts are 4140 and would need drawn (stress relieved) in the heat treat oven afterward if I did that. That would create a few other issues with the current rollers which were finish machined after previous welding and stress relief.
So, I have some Schedule 40 steel pipe here that's 6-3/4" OD. I have plenty of the alum frame material I made the original mills from. I do not have enough of the alum sheet metal for the bin, so that's a small issue. but I might have an idea for that. I do not want to buy a sheet of aluminum again, it's a zillion $ a sheet.
So my question is, how many people here have experience with a smooth roller mill with big rollers? I don't even see them sold on the online HBS sites. I suspect that big outfits (breweries) use such animals. I'd need to make really big gears to go along with the rollers, or accept a lot of stress on small ones and a timing belt to cover the rest of the distance between the rollers when the gears are much smaller.
Am I trying to solve an issue that doesn't exist? I notice when I buy pre-milled kits, they are crushed differently than my mill does. There's less powder. Mine absolutely does not have similar speed between the two rollers. It's not as bad as purchased ones I see, but it's not perfect. The idler roller goes slower, which means there's an amount of "grind" taking place vs "crush". We don't want "grind". I do see one mill on Morebeer that has gears for exactly what I want to do. But only one, all the others omit those.
I do however want to add gears to synchronize the two rollers, and when I built them, I didn't think to add enough shaft length on which to attach gears to accomplish that. I've sort of considered welding an appendage on... But the shafts are 4140 and would need drawn (stress relieved) in the heat treat oven afterward if I did that. That would create a few other issues with the current rollers which were finish machined after previous welding and stress relief.
So, I have some Schedule 40 steel pipe here that's 6-3/4" OD. I have plenty of the alum frame material I made the original mills from. I do not have enough of the alum sheet metal for the bin, so that's a small issue. but I might have an idea for that. I do not want to buy a sheet of aluminum again, it's a zillion $ a sheet.
So my question is, how many people here have experience with a smooth roller mill with big rollers? I don't even see them sold on the online HBS sites. I suspect that big outfits (breweries) use such animals. I'd need to make really big gears to go along with the rollers, or accept a lot of stress on small ones and a timing belt to cover the rest of the distance between the rollers when the gears are much smaller.
Am I trying to solve an issue that doesn't exist? I notice when I buy pre-milled kits, they are crushed differently than my mill does. There's less powder. Mine absolutely does not have similar speed between the two rollers. It's not as bad as purchased ones I see, but it's not perfect. The idler roller goes slower, which means there's an amount of "grind" taking place vs "crush". We don't want "grind". I do see one mill on Morebeer that has gears for exactly what I want to do. But only one, all the others omit those.