I promise it will be certified by a qualified professional - albeit a professor of electrical and electronic engineering (well not quite, but if I mentioned his title, noone would know what it was - lets call it quadruple super duper quasi multidimensional dark string electronics and electrical engineering). About 300,000 times more qualified than a sparky. Even I only understand 1/4 of what he does.
As someone who has an engineering degree from one of the more academically inclined (but well regarded) universities in Aus, in my experience, professors would have to be some of the most practically useless people I have come across.
I would trust the sparky every time over the guy with the calculus & linear algebra books and the 3d monitors. Seriously, how often does a professor look at 240v AC wiring? How would he know the relevant codes and standards? He might know the theory, but he probably wouldn't even have an insulated screw driver.
(Ironically one of my best mates is a sparky studying to become an electrical engineer - best of both worlds).
You asked earlier in the thread. Here is my brewbot build log:
http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum/inde...showtopic=15996
Most people here have written you off. And I don't blame them. But I'm going to take you at your word that you do listen and take the time to explain the approach that worked for me and what I think you should do.
My approach was a bit different to yours. Firstly, I did a fair few brews before I started. I knew the gear I had fundamentally worked.
I didn't buy anything expensive or dick around modeling anything. Not even on paper. I had a good idea of what I wanted to do in my mind, and just mocked up using my existing vessels. Let's face it, AG brewing isn't that complicated on the scale of things. No 3d models needed here.
I didn't plan on doing everything automated. Automate the easy and time consuming parts first. I planned on doing a prototype and throwing most of it away. It's pretty easy to assume something will work and find out it doesn't in practice and your whole approach is wrong.
I approached it in pieces. HLT first. Once that was working the next bit would often use the same building blocks. But as a result you will see it came together pretty quickly for me. A bit rough-and-ready. But a couple of months from concept to automated HLT fill, HLT heat, mash infusion, batch sparge, boil and hop additions. No one part beside the single march pump cost me over $40. I treated each like it was probably not going to work, so didn't want to waste too much money. I did it all in copper and brass with the plan to move to stainless as I became happy and confident with the design.
There were of course a few bits that didn't work out and needed to be re-though or re-worked. I was glad not to have to discard anything expensive.
I think once you get that point you can start to think about bells & whistles. Automate cleaning and grain disposal.
If you keep things simple enough you don't need to weld anything. Having said that, I love my mig and being able to blast together frames and brackets in a few minutes. But that is only a time saver. You can do a lot with nuts and bolts.
There is not point having a TIG welder if you don't have a basic shop and hand tools.
I love working with metal. It is forgiving. You can weld it and fill it. Bend it. It is malleable. The hop dropper, made of plastic and wood took a couple of attempts. I can't weld plastic and wood back together when wanting to make a change. Wood and plastic can split & crack and not be strong enough to do what you want. I wouldn't stuff around with plastic dog food feeders. Anyway, grain automation should be something that can come way later. Focus on the important bits.
So I reiterate what others have said. Skill up. Go take a welding course. Don't skimp. 3d monitors will be obsolete in a few years. Skills last forever.
Same with software skills & electronics skills. I personally would recommend against using a windoze PC or PC at all. I don't really like PIC micros either. You need practically no CPU power to do this job. It's all about I/O. Go get some audinos. I used the same AVR cpu in the brewbot can really like the lib-arv and gcc toolchain for it. Alternatively look at a cheap ARM based board. Plenty of CPU grunt in any ARM. Can even get one that runs a full OS (linux).
I wouldn't buy a single other thing if I were you. Make some progress first.
Get a basic controller setup that can read some temps and control a relay. Get your HLT working.
Sounds simple right? OK, what temp sensor? Where is it mounted? Does the water stratify and give false readings? Compensate in software or add some convection rods? how to fill? How to control the water inflow? How to measure volume? Start with conductivity probe and fixed batch sizes? How to heat? How to measure temp? How long will it take? What about sparge water? Fill with all the water needed, or do the infusion water first, followed by the hotter sparge water? How much I/O and code space does that need? Dedicate a microcontroller to it, or use a single one for the whole system?
With an automated HLT You can use it to simplify your brew days already. Speed doesn't matter that much for HLT so use your 240v 10A outlet to heat it. Get your sparky in to make sure you've done it all right. Show him you mean business. Mount it up high, so it can gravity feed the rest of your manual brew day. No pump needed. Next step get your controller activating your pinch valves or some solenoids to fill and empty it. Since you are using it as part of your manual brew day it's like a QA session. Nothing is left unattended, so less risk of burning the place down. Build some confidence in your solution for when it does need to be unattended.
Get the mash and boil working with basic vessels. Maybe what you already have. Get the process automation working. Maybe do the dough-in by hand. Maybe do the boil by hand with gas. Think about how you solve your heat source problem. Be observant. Be prepared to discover new issues to solved. Like how far away from the wall to mount your hot vessels to prevent wall/paint damage.
Once the basics are there, then go design a flash mash tun that can drop the grain and make you coffee.
Prove the naysayers here that you can do something more than dream, buy stuff, and BS on some forum. Or maybe recognise your weakness and get in a good practical mate to put some things together and get it started.
The most important thing is not to be arrogant. Let's face it your current design has to be naive. You have never done anything like this before. Even if you collected all the advice from all the knowledgeable people here, there would still be at least one show stopper flaw in whatever design you had. But better one than many.
But be warned, if you don't, and you have some know-it-all come backs to this post (let's face it, you have pissed off most of the knowledgeable people in this thread and have nothing to show for it... you have proved no-one wrong so far), you will have done yourself a great disservice. I'll probably be happy to join the ranks of the piss-takers and told-you-soers.
tl;dr: put something together and show some progress!
Anyway, enough from me, longest post evar....
