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  4. Did this machine ever run?

Did this machine ever run?

Rectifier's picture
Submitted by Rectifier on Fri, 03/01/2013 - 1:04am
Topic Type: 
Question

I am very interested in building one of these for my small grain farm and have the tools and material to build one. I'm curious as to if the machine as described here was ever operated. The drawings are hard to put together into a coherent picture of the final machine, especially the rotor design. It all looks like drawings out of an old farmer's notebook from 1980, was this the machine tested or was it reimplemented from his drawings?

There is a mention of it being operated at New Hampshire - any pictures of the final machine or reports of performance would be quite valuable!

dorn's picture
Submitted by dorn on Fri, 03/01/2013 - 7:39am

The unit we ran that was built on the plans is in Brattleborough Vermont. We had it here for the Farm Hack New Hampshire event and tested it on oats and It worked very well. We did not set up the cyclone separator but we used a clipper fanning mill to separate the chaff and we had a product which was clean enough to make oatmeal with. The raw footage is being sent to me next week which should show the unit running and working - but while I track that down I can post some still images I tool before we ran it. The images taken are inside the sheet metal housing mostly show the stator and cylinder with flat fan blades which create airflow to blow out hulled material. The stator blocks a good view of the gap between stator and cylinder. The other photo is of the gate to control flow into the huller.

Rectifier's picture
Submitted by Rectifier on Tue, 03/26/2013 - 10:28pm

That's great that you managed to build a working device from these plans! So the machine doesn't require suction to pull out the hulled oats/chaff mixture, it will blow it out of the outlet itself? From the drawings it looks like a lot will fall to the bottom and be trapped? Or do the fins on the cylinder move enough air to lift it.

You call it a "cylinder" which brings to mind a combine cylinder and its "beating" action. Does this work by contact or does it work by impact (throwing the grains into the stator)?

Thanks for getting back to me and it will be great to see photos/video of the entire machine. When you say the finished product could be used for oatmeal, I assume it is still whole groats and would need to be cut/broken to cook? Or is there a large proportion of broken groats?

TommyY's picture
Submitted by TommyY on Mon, 09/02/2013 - 7:52pm

Learned recently that the all-crop harvester, made between 1930-60's, is being used to dehull spelt.

I hope to learn more about what kind of rate the machine is doing it.

http://www.forum.allcropharvester.com/yaf_postst88_Spelt-Dehulling.aspx