New roaster (600k of photos)

[Lovey]

Re: New roaster (600k of photos)

You just tell them "its for personal use", or "I was holding it for a friend."  ;D
Steve.

[Master_Chief]

Re: New roaster (600k of photos)

Yeah, that things a beast!!

Id feel like a junkie making a home made roaster.. what if the cops come over, what would they say?? hehehe.

[Boris]

Re: New roaster (600k of photos)

Excellent set up. Now if you can just reduce the size, put it on wheels or in a case.... ;D

Boris

[Mark]

Re: New roaster (600k of photos)

Mdub, any chance of posting a photo next time you roast?

Mal, it gets good and hot (although perhaps not as hot as I thought it might) I put some thought into putting something between the two (although you still end up with the motor shaft running directly in to the roaster, and extending that turns into a bit of a hassle.) My concern actually wasnt so much the grease, as the gearbox itself, which is surprisingly plasticy inside.

Eventually, in the tried and true method of keeping it simple, I decided to just give it a go. If the motor dies, the wreckers I bought it from it on the way home from work, and $10 for another one isnt too painful. Although its been running strong so far.

[Dimal]

Re: New roaster (600k of photos)

Hi Mark,

Likewise the comments above... great setup and super flexible too [smiley=thumbsup.gif]. Out of interest, how hot does the Windscreen Wiper Gearbox become for the duration of a roast? I imagine that if it gets too hot, the grease inside the gearbox will start to boil or at least get very runny (technical term) and maybe look for a place to leak through into the motor.
Do you think some form of insulation is needed to prevent this from happening?

Might start switching my interest to build a SC/TO on to what you have created. The quality of the roast in your pics looks really great and very even. Great ingenuity Mark ;D,

Mal.

[Mdub]

Re: New roaster (600k of photos)

Mark,

Ive been experimenting with the same type of setup, but noticed you had a wooden shelf to hold the heatgun.

I went to the local car parts place (with my heatgun) and got an exhaust pipe extension which is a perfect fit for the nozzle of lot of the heatguns on the market.

You can also get heat proof hose which you can split lengthways (one side only which when fitted in the hole in the side of your drum, will hold the exhaust pipe, and heatgun in place without using the shelf.

Mdub

[Mark]

Re: New roaster (600k of photos)

At the moment Im running it off a 7Ah lead acid battery, paralleled with its charger (which chips in 3 or 4 amps and helps top up the battery between batches). The long term plan is to schwag a PC power supply from one of my friends. I managed to get one out of a junked PC at work, but it was an old one and wasnt quite up to the task. If all else fails Ill buy a new cheap one, but I dont want to do anything drastic

[robusto]

Re: New roaster (600k of photos)

Great setup, Mark. ALways satisfying to make something that works from easily obtainable parts designed for totally different purposed. Youre right about the windscreen motor having huge torque --- someone once told me something very similar is used in garage doors.

What are you powering the motor with -- 7 amps is a decent draw.

[Mark]

Ive been thinking about making a BBQ drum roaster for a while, a few weeks ago on the way back from work I decided to pick up a few of the components, I stopped at a wreckers and got a windscreen wiper motor ($10) and then went to a camping store and got a stainless steel pot to use as the drum ($20). When I got home I got to thinking, and decided to put them all together with as a heatgun roaster to tide me over while I obtained the other components (like a BBQ). Here are the results:



The motor is screwed to the bottom of the pot.



And attached to the aluminium stirrer. Goes at about 30rpm, and has _heaps_ of torque. It draws something like 7 or 8 amps.



Initially the heatgun just went in through the top, but since it was quite deep inside the pot it was melting, so I cut a whole in the side instead. The stand is just some off cuts of mdf. I also cut a hole in the lid of the pot to let smoke and chaff out, and to allow me to watch the beans. Here we are just kicking off about 350g of Brazil Cerrado, the multimeter in the background is attached to a thermocouple for termpature monitoring.



My bean cooler, taken from great ideas here at CS, cools 500g easily in 30 odd seconds.



The Brazil dancing around on the bean cooler, this is a great time to check for stones.



And the delicious finished product.



After using this a few times Ive cancelled my plans of a BBQ roaster. Ive roasted batches from 200g to 600g easily. Im certain I could roast more than that if I needed to. The heatgun has adjustable temperature, so I combine that with the thermocouple in the bean mass to try different profiles, or I can just set it to middle heat and go grab a beer. Usually Im roasting to start of second in about 14 or 15 minutes, but it is easy to go longer or shorter.