Millmaster Mill

[peas_and_corn]

OK, below is the hopper for my mill-

I got the design from this thread and modified it a little to fit the Monster (thanks Chad ). I am hopeless with making things, so dad made it for me, which is really nice of him, and I give him kudos for it.

EDIT: I... I'm not sure why I posted it here.

 

[white.grant]

I have been a very good boy and will be getting a millmaster for my birthday in couple of weeks. I'm very excited.
I've taken note of the pumpy gear guard but are there any other tips for hopper design?

cheers

grant

 

[warra48]

Definitely go the gear guard. I can hand mill 5 kg of grain in 5 to 6 minutes with the guard. Without the guard, you will get grain caught between the gears, which will make cranking it very difficult.
I use the hopper supplied by MashMaster, and can fill it all the way up without problem. One day I'll work on extending it to take the full grain bill, but I don't see the need at present.

 

[geoff_tewierik]

Mill is now motorised.

I used a 12V DC motor, a spider coupler, a 240V AC to 12V DC power adaptor, some wire and a 3.5mm socket, all from Jaycar.

I pulled the spider coupler apart and took one of the metal pieces, removed the grub screw and drilled out the 6mm hole to 1/2" to fit the drive axle on the Millmaster. I wired up the 3.5mm socket to the DC motor, using 5" lengths of wire. I then fitted the drilled out metal part of the spider coupler to the mill fitting the grub screw into the keyway and the other one to the DC motor with the grub screw tightened down onto the flat part of the shaft, connecting the two pieces of equipment together via the blue plastic central piece of the coupler.

Plugged in the power back to the wall socket, connected the 3.5mm plug into the socket and turned on the power pack. The motor easily turned the mill over. I need to now mount the whole lot onto a board which I'm planning on siting over the top of the Mash tun. I picked up some 1 & 1/2" saddle clips to go around the motor and hold it down on the board.

In the scheme of things a drive to Jaycar for some bits and pieces and not even ten minutes of work and it was all up and running. Now it's just a matter of throwing in some grain and getting the settings right for a good crush. If it does a good job, great, if not, I'll upgrade the motor to something with a bit more torque but with 50kg/cm or 4.2Nm on tap (if I use a grunty power supply) I don't think it'll be a massive issue for me.

I know it's a bit naff to reply to your own post, but I finally got a chance to bolt all this together last night, rather than paying the in-laws and visiting sister in-law a lot of attention. The father-in-law gave me a hand with squeezing the saddle clips in tight before they were screwed in. All up took me about 45 minutes of work over a couple of hours (dinner intervened).

Filled up the hopper with grain and turned on the power, flicked the switch and nothing happened

The motor doesn't have enough grunt to crack a hopper full of grain, in fact after it was all emptied out I couldn't even get it to crack one grain.

So my simple, cheap, milling setup is going back to the drawing boards and I'll be sourcing the same motor for electric bikes that others have used.

Cheers,

GT

 

[bindi]

Can't stop laughing :lol: that is so good for the soul.
Thanks, I needed that. :lol:

 

[kabooby]

You could always use that motor to sharpen pencils

Kabooby

 

[browndog]

That picture should become a poster for unbridled optomism. Well done GT, at least you can put the motor back in your slot car now

cheers

Browndog

 

[porky]

Filled up the hopper with grain and turned on the power, flicked the switch and nothing happened

The motor doesn't have enough grunt to crack a hopper full of grain, in fact after it was all emptied out I couldn't even get it to crack one grain.

So my simple, cheap, milling setup is going back to the drawing boards and I'll be sourcing the same motor for electric bikes that others have used.

Cheers,

GT

Here is my three attempts at getting a motor to run my mill. Third time lucky. First one was an old mixmaster. Didn't do anything, but didn't try one grain at a time. Second I was sure would work. It was a floor polishing motor which seemed to have lots of torque....wrong!
It might have worked if I started it before the grain went in, but I don't want something like that 'cause I will do it wrong all the time.
So, at last put a 1/3 hp motor, 2 inch drive pulley and a 14 inch pully on the mill......starts full with no problems!


Cheers,
BD

 

[bouncingcastle]

Here is my three attempts at getting a motor to run my mill. Third time lucky. First one was an old mixmaster. Didn't do anything, but didn't try one grain at a time. Second I was sure would work. It was a floor polishing motor which seemed to have lots of torque....wrong!
It might have worked if I started it before the grain went in, but I don't want something like that 'cause I will do it wrong all the time.
So, at last put a 1/3 hp motor, 2 inch drive pulley and a 14 inch pully on the mill......starts full with no problems!


Cheers,
BD

I know why you couldn't get the first one to work... The mixmaster needed to be on setting 5 "white sauce, puddings"

Glad I could add to this thread....

 

[Simon W]

So my simple, cheap, milling setup is going back to the drawing boards and I'll be sourcing the same motor for electric bikes that others have used.

GT

Doesn't even crack one grain?
I'd guess that your power supply is as soft as fresh sh!t.
Sorry, haven't read any of you're previous posts, but the gearheadmotor looks like a Jaycar YG-2738??
The 55kg per cm torque, 160RPM one?
What's the diameter of the millmaster rollers?
If, for example, the rollers are 2" diameter, their radius is 2.5cm, so 55kg/2.5 = 22kg of crushing force IF your power supply could handle the current draw.
Which is 14 amps(or 14000 mA -- what does your supply say?) at full-load (170 Watts - almost 1/4 horsepower), a wall-wart aint gonna cut it, either is a Car Battery charger.
The motor needs almost half an amp( 6 Watts) with no load at all, just spinning in the air.
A modified PC switch-mode power supply? ---- maybe, if it doesn't freak out at the surge current when the motor is switched on.
If you have a fully charged car battery nearby, hook that up with some heavy duty wiring(not the stuff in your photo, which would probably smoke and melt at 14 amps) and a couple of decent aligator clips to connect to the battery terminals, get rid of the wimpy switch and the 3.5mm plug which will probably weld itself together at 14amps... and I think you'll be a happy man

 

[geoff_tewierik]

That picture should become a poster for unbridled optomism. Well done GT, at least you can put the motor back in your slot car now

Funny bloke

Seriously though, the motor has 50kg/cm of torque @55rpm, which is 4.9N-m.

Considering that people are using this unit: http://secure.oatleyelectronics.com//produ...ba2bd12b2538818 which puts out only 7.42N-m (75.6kg/cm) @ 320rpm on 24V, I didn't think it was too big an ask as most people aren't event running that unit at 24V, most are using 12V to get lower rpms, thus they wouldn't be getting the max torque.

 

[Simon W]

How did you go with the car battery Geoff?

Just for interest sake, I tried crushing a few individual grains (JW Trad. Ale) on a set of scales and got some surprising results!
The least amount of weight required to crush one grain was ~2kg, most was 6.25kg+(limit of my scales), est. average from 10 grains would be between 4 and 5kg. Much much higher than I had expected.

My comment above about 1/4 horsepower is missleading(dunno what I was thinking).
Shaft horsepower would probably be little over 1/8 HP.

 

[hoohaaman]

Bit the bullet today and ordered the millmaster plus hopper,now out to the garage and build a suitable cabinet to house this beast and motor.

Could you guys in Victoria please refresh me where to buy pulley's,belts ect.Got a nice motor already,just need the pulley's/belts

Cheers Hoohaa

 

[geoff_tewierik]

How did you go with the car battery Geoff?

Just for interest sake, I tried crushing a few individual grains (JW Trad. Ale) on a set of scales and got some surprising results!
The least amount of weight required to crush one grain was ~2kg, most was 6.25kg+(limit of my scales), est. average from 10 grains would be between 4 and 5kg. Much much higher than I had expected.

My comment above about 1/4 horsepower is missleading(dunno what I was thinking).
Shaft horsepower would probably be little over 1/8 HP.

Hey Simon, haven't had a crack at it yet, will try a different power source, I have a fair few 12V ones, and see what I can get to work.

 

[clarkey7]

Hi All,

Used my Millmaster on a real brew for the first time today.

Due to excellent information provided here (gear guard) and the boys at Craftbrewer, I had no troubles cracking 5kg of grain in around 1 minute with a gap setting of 1mm (was 1 increment toward roller gap from the 12 O'clock position).

The $60 Impact drill from Bunnings did the trick..no handcrancking for this puppy.

During testing, I did nearly burn out the drill attempting to crack grain with the gears full of grain..... :angry:

It is curious that the hopper provided by the manufacturer doesn't do it's job and stop this from happening. Not to worry, cardboard from drill box worked...

My effeciency was a couple of percent up on my usual numbers @ 77%....I have beersmith set to 75% and was currently averaging 74%.

I think I'll do a couple more brews before mucking with the gap settings as the grain looked good.
I'm one happy guy about now.

Cheers,

PB

 

[warra48]

I'm still handcranking mine. The only downside is the MillMaster handle is rather long.
I've solved that problem by drilling a hole through the handle about 6 or 7 cm closer to the shaft, and remounted the handpiece there, so the throw is quite a bit shorter. It didn't seem to make it any harder to use by hand, but the gear guard is essential.

 

[Ross]

It is curious that the hopper provided by the manufacturer doesn't do it's job and stop this from happening. Not to worry, cardboard from drill box worked...


PB

Hi PB,

I've spoken to Frank at mashmaster & this problem is being addressed.

cheers Ross

 

[barls]

is that why there are no hoppers available at the moment then ross or are you just out of stock?

 

[bconnery]

The great thing is though, this site being the way it is, someone already has the answer.
I set mine up with a gear guard from Pumpy's design, I'm pretty sure it was. I just approximated mine out of carboard and even with my dodgy cutting skills it worked a treat...
I agree it would be better if it did it out of the box but the mill works so well it's hard to worry about it

For a hopper I use the water diverter hopper that I put together for the marga, following another thread somewhere on here... It doesn't fit exact but it is pretty close. Fits a fair bit of grain without doing the full batch.

 

[Paul H]

For a hopper I use the water diverter hopper that I put together for the marga, following another thread somewhere on here... It doesn't fit exact but it is pretty close. Fits a fair bit of grain without doing the full batch.

WTF is a water diverter hopper?

Cheers

paul