Apologies for the lack of updates, there hasn't really been much to tell.
Unfortunately Christmas is looking almost impossible. Mrs Me Mate Glyn is pregnant, they are trying to find a new house and the powers that be are keeping Glyn's nose to the grindstone. Couple that with the general inability to get anything out of anybody during the leadup to Christmas and I'd have to bet on us not getting there. Sorry.
Basically, the general design is just about complete and what I've shown you in the previous pics is close to what we'll have. I've got a bit closer with the lid arrangement, it will look something like this:
The seal will not be quite as large, and my material of choice will be clear silicone, but you get the idea.
As mentioned previously the legs will be 'sockets' for 4 x 30mm whatever, and they will be attached corner-on to form a square. I will be able to provide stainless legs in different sizes but it will obviously be cheaper for people to source their own locally.
There are a few reasons I am going with 4 legs over 3, but here are some of them:
1. more stable (larger footprint)
2. much easier to build your own free-standing stand (or wall bracket)
3. legs will form part of handle arrangement
4. easier to fit in square spaces (I know, it sounds weak to me too).
There are just a few things slowing us down at the moment, aside from welder virility. I am still refining a lot of the details, and for obvious reasons the design isn't going to work until everything fits together properly. There is a lot of back-and-forth between suppliers until we settle on The Final Solution, and once we do that we then need to construct the appropriate jigs.
Once we start producing them we'll be able to support them as a 'product line' rather than just a bunch of one-off fabrications.
I still haven't decided what to do about the side port. The main purpose I can see for a side port at all is for sampling. When racking it should be easy to dump the sediment first and rack from the bottom. For this reason I was planning to supply them without side fittings, as it may not be necessary and if you want one it should be easy to drill a hole and add a weldless fitting (the rotating racking arms are a weldless design). However I am tempted to look at adding a smaller triclover ferrule to the side, as it should be possible to create a rotating design by welding a tube into the valve and lubricating the seal during assembly.
[EDIT: I have since done some more research and the consensus seems to be that you can never really clear all of the yeast out of the bottom port - although most existing designs have some sort of ledge at the cone end which this design doesn't have]
Does anybody have any input on what size valve they would want on the side port, and what they intend to use it for?
:beer:
