Wanted: stainless steel perforated sheet

[DJ_L3ThAL]

A recirculating mash can become stuck.

Ive become an expert at that!!!

 

[husky]

A recirculating mash can become stuck.

Yep, you know what I mean
I have two dia 500mm cone perforated mash screens that used to have a 50mm high centre and are now nearly flat as a pancake! I never thought the march pump would be able to pull so much suction.

 

[real_beer]

A recirculating mash can become stuck.

The mash will keep mashing at whatever temp your sparge is stuck at, but I do get what husky meant in his post.

 

[Tex N Oz]

Yep, you know what I mean
I have two dia 500mm cone perforated mash screens that used to have a 50mm high centre and are now nearly flat as a pancake! I never thought the march pump would be able to pull so much suction.

It's not really pulling that much suction, it's just reducing the pressure under the filter until the delta P is great enough to overcome the structural limitations of the substrate.
While this might not sound like much, it can be a tremendous amount of pressure. eg, 500 mm has a surface area of 196349 mm2 or ~.2 m2 resting just on the edges at a long radius.
Now consider the mass of the mash above the filter and the pump reducing pressure below and you could quickly reach high mass on your dome without much pressure reduction. It's kinda like the opposite of 500 kids jumping on a jumping castle that's being aired by a tiny blower motor. It's really not about the pumps ability to pull a hard vacuum, it's about it's ability to reduce pressure slightly over a large surface area.
I'd say the mass could approach the weight of your volume. To further insult, the substrate includes hundreds of small perforations that have distorted to become a shallow dome with no support to prevent radial re-expansion allowing the apex of the dome to resubmit.

 

[fdsaasdf]

The discussion took an interesting journey there... Haven't had a problem with my MT false bottom collapsing so far but if I ever do I reference to help to understand why

Back on topic... I eventually picked up a 1.5 x 0.5m sheet of stainless off gumtree for $30. There's enough material in the sheet for the 3 projects I had in mind. Now I just need another weekend to get drilling / punching on the drip tray!

 

[spog]

Yep, you know what I mean
I have two dia 500mm cone perforated mash screens that used to have a 50mm high centre and are now nearly flat as a pancake! I never thought the march pump would be able to pull so much suction.

Had a similar experience 2 wks ago with my mesh tea ball that I use as a hop screen in my rig,my LBP sucked one side of the tea ball flat when it became clogged with hop snot,luckily I noticed the lack of flow in time before the LBP shat its self.
Those LBP's are tough little feckers.
Must order another just in case.