Mill To Wiper Motor Connection

[Justin]

Greetings to all, and a happy new year.

Well, I'm finally back to a computer and having a read of all the new posts from over the break. Santa brought me a digital camera so I thought I'd take the opportunity to post some pics of my mill to wiper motor connections that were requested a little while back. It's going to be nice to not have to borrow a camera .

Here is a picture of my mill hooked up to the 12V wiper motor.



Here is a close up of the coupling between the two.



This is the little brass block that I made to couple the two together. I just found a piece of brass and drilled a 3/8" hole right through the middle to accept the mills shaft. I also scrounged a grub screw off another bit of gear and drilled and cut a thread into it so that the grub screw could engage the flat cut into the mills drive shaft and stop it spinning. Any bolt would do though.





The wiper motor comes with a flanged nut that is used to fasten the arm on to the motor which turns the windscreen wipers. This nut was just a little bit bigger than 3/8" so I drilled out the block with a slightly bigger drill bit at the end where the nut would go. With a convincing whack with a hammer the nut embedded into the hole and I added a bit of solder to help secure it there. Luckily it all stayed true and in line, but the flange on the nut helps with that.



So basically, I did this with very basic and few tools. It's not the only way you could do it but it worked for me in true hodge podge home brew fashion. If you are looking for a cheap way to motorise your mill this might be worth considering. For most I would imaging it would be easier to do this than finding pulleys and motors to hook up a conventional motor as seen om many other mills. Plus mine is very portable and compact. I really didn't like using a drill. I got sick of the issues with trying to control the speed to maintain a good crush and I was also sick of breathing the fumes from the smoking motor windings.

As I have said before, I use a 12V car battery charger to run it (this one has a 10amp fuse but I think the actual charger is a 4amp one. It was about $10 from Supercheap auto). I run the motor on the slow speed (wiper motors are two speed, well at least most are). It wont break any land speed records for the speed of crush but it works well. I just set it going and top it up every 5-10mins. Probably takes me 15mins to crush 5kgs of grain. It just sits on the bucket and does it's thing. I don't find it a problem.

Hope it helps.

Cheers, Justin

 

[BoilerBoy]

G'day Justin,

Excellent pictures mate, I really like this set up it looks simple and compact and very achievable.

what wiper did you use and are some more preferable over others?

cheers

 

[Justin]

The one I used was out of an old Nissan Pulsar~maybe an 1983-1985 model.

I've had a few wiper motors over the years that I have used for other projects but I think they must be all be fairly similar. You should really be able to pick one up for next to nothing (even free) from a dodgey wreakers or a wrecked car lying around the place. I wouldn't pay much for one so ring around, some wreckers charge through the roof so watch out.

Do you know anyone with a car body lying around, the wiper motors are nearly always left on them.

Cheers, Justin

 

[BoilerBoy]

Thanks Justin,

You mentioned it takes around 15 min for 5kg of grain, does the the motor struggle at all or handle the load adequately?

 

[Justin]

It crunches through with no worries, it doesn't struggle. The slow crush rate is due to the rpm of the motor which at a guess might be in the 60-70rpm range. I did try to power it which a battery charger with only a 5amp fuse and it would blow the fuse every now and then when the rollers grabbed a good bite of grain but since I got the charger with the 10amp fuse it hasn't blown once.

When milling wheat I have been mixing it through the rest of the grain bill so that the rollers don't get a hit of wheat all in one go but I might try it in future to see if it will handle 100% wheat. Having said that I have done wheat beers with 50-60% wheat and it milled no problems. I've been using this motor for probably the last dozen brews or more and haven't had any issues.

FWIW I don't change my mill gap for wheat, I just use the one setting for everything.

Cheers, Justin

 

[Batz]

It crunches through with no worries, it doesn't struggle. The slow crush rate is due to the rpm of the motor which at a guess might be in the 60-70rpm range. I did try to power it which a battery charger with only a 5amp fuse and it would blow the fuse every now and then when the rollers grabbed a good bite of grain but since I got the charger with the 10amp fuse it hasn't blown once.

When milling wheat I have been mixing it through the rest of the grain bill so that the rollers don't get a hit of wheat all in one go but I might try it in future to see if it will handle 100% wheat. Having said that I have done wheat beers with 50-60% wheat and it milled no problems. I've been using this motor for probably the last dozen brews or more and haven't had any issues.

FWIW I don't change my mill gap for wheat, I just use the one setting for everything.

Cheers, Justin

[post="100542"][/post]​

A slow crush is a good crush IMO

Looks really good Justin , many thanks for posting the pics.

Batz

 

[Ross]

Nice one Justin - i reckon this is the way I'll go - can run it off a battery as well & not be tied to a mains supply...

Thanks for the pics - they speak a thousand words... :beer:

cheers Ross

 

[Justin]

I agree Batz, a slow crush is what your after, it would be around hand cranking speed. That's why I hooked this up because I couldn't get the slow crush I wanted from the drill.

Cheers guys.

 

[BoilerBoy]

Yeah, the more I look at this the more I reckon this is the way I'll go.

Seeing pictures really helps, very impressed :beer:

 

[nonicman]

Justin, would the windscreen wiper motor have enough torque to power a mash tun rake? Happy with hand cranking the mill, but a mash rake would be the ants pants.

 

[Batz]

nonicman
It would have enough torque to burn , easily do the task.
You do need enough amps to feed it

I have one one my HLT

 

[fraser_john]

This really is exactly what I have been looking for, a great alternative to a drill or a washing machine motor (if you can figure out the wiring on those things)!

Fantastic! I' ll start looking for one to power my crankandstein mill!

 

[warrenlw63]

Just out of curiousity Justin and I dare say you've probably thought of and/or tried the idea.

Long story short I was at a flea market on the weekend. One vendor was selling cordless drill chucks (plastic) for about $3 each. Upon observing the chucks I noticed they had a female thread in them. Could they have possibly matched the male thread on a wiper motor? :unsure: Would make an easy transition if they do.

BTW. Good bit of engineering Justin. :beerbang:

Warren -

 

[TidalPete]

Yeah, the more I look at this the more I reckon this is the way I'll go.

Seeing pictures really helps, very impressed

[post="100576"][/post]​

Me too. I have never been able to keep the RPM's at a slow & steady rate with the drill.
I'm going to have a go at this.
A very nice job of work Justin. :super:

:beer:

 

[Justin]

Warren, good thinking -great minds etc etc

Now honestly I did think of this (most probably because I thought my drill would die so I'd have easy access to a chuck). The biggest issue I had with this whole set up was coupling the motor to the shaft. My first though was to get a drill chuck and then somehow connect that to the motor shaft. However I was still going to have a problem attaching the chuck to the shaft (plus I'd never seen the back of a drill chuck).

As for would the thread on the back of the drill chuck fit the wiper motor-well I don't know but I doubt it. The nut that fitted the wiper motor is quite small, not knowing but I'd guess it's a 1/4" nut but it might be a metric size of some sort. I really don't know as I just used the one I had on it.

I really did get pretty lucky with the bits and pieces I had lying round. The grub screw came of an abandoned bit of lab gear and I just found the brass block somewhere. Being brass meant I could solder it easily too and it was quite soft and easy to work.

It's quite possible that you could rig up the chuck to fit the motor somehow, I guess you'd just have to work it out as you went.

One idea I did have was that if you had a tap and die set (or access to one-they are used for cutting threads in holes and on bolts etc) instead of soldering in the nut you could just cut the thread straight into your block of brass or aluminium. The motor would screw directly into the block-eliminating the nut.

So you could use brass/aluminium/steel/stainless whatever you had access to in the right size for the project. Drill a small hole through the whole piece (the size needed to cut your motor's thread into) then drill a hole from the other side deep enough for the mills shaft to sit and enguage with the locking grub screw.

I don't attach the motor to anything, it just sits there. This allows for any out of plumb issues with alightment. The motor just wobbles ever so slightly.

Hope it helps and I hope it doesn't cause too many headaches for people. Good luck.

Cheers, Justin

 

[Justin]

Given the age and origin of the car they are probably metric nuts/threads.

You need something like this to cut your threads:

 

[warrenlw63]

Justin.

The pesimist in me said that would be the case. These chucks were the plastic keyless ones you see on a lot of cheaper drills. They have a female thread on the back that mates them to the drill shaft. Looked fairly close to the shaft thread diameter of my wiper motor. (Mine's from a JE Camira).

Was thinking of buying another wiper motor and trying something like this for stirring the wort when chilling. I'm using a cordless drill by itself at the moment and it's a bit of a PITA having to hold it while stirring and not really having any means to regulate the RPMs except by hand. That said I think the cordless is too brutal anyway. <_<

I may lash out the $3 next time I'm at a flea market just to appease my curiousity. :lol:

Warren -

 

[Justin]

You never know your luck. As I said I don't know if it will or will not fit. Worth a try for $3.

FWIW I have thought about using a wiper motor as a stirrer for the HLT (which I think you have already done and I know other do-that's actually what mine was originally for) and then just transferring the whole stirrer and paddle assembly over the the boil kettle 15mins from flame out. You'd be able to do that with yours somehow wouldn't you?

That way it's one less plug and lead in the brewery.

Cheers, Justin

Oh to have a permanant setup to leave my brewery built and plugged in. One day it will be mine, oh yes, it shall be mine.

FWIW I just scored another Omron E5CS temp controller off ebay :beerbang: That's two now. Digital HLT and Herms control here I come.

 

[warrenlw63]

Nah, can't use the HLT stirrer for the kettle. I've modified it because it was a bit wonky in it's original form and it's too difficult to fit to the aluminium lid.

I don't fancy using it unless I can keep the boiler covered at the same time. That's where I thought a drill chuck would come in handy I could then sit another wiper motor up higher and just have the shaft going through a 10-11mm hole in the boiler lid.

Here's the current entity HLT stirrer.

Hey Justin! Congrats on the second controller you lucky bugger. :lol:

Warren -

 

[TidalPete]

This is probably the charger Justin mentions in his posts here.
$13 from Supercheap Auto up this way. It's got a 10 amp fuse.
Just honing my newly aquired camera skills.

:beer:


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