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Larry Jaques Larry Jaques is offline
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Default need ideas for feeding a trommel sifter

On Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:00:29 -0700, the infamous
scrawled the following:

On Wed, 16 Sep 2009 07:01:57 -0700, Larry Jaques
wrote:

On Tue, 15 Sep 2009 21:34:57 -0700, the infamous
scrawled the following:

On Tue, 15 Sep 2009 12:28:12 -0500, Tim Wescott
wrote:

On Mon, 14 Sep 2009 21:26:02 -0700, stevethompson wrote:



Our Josephine County composting facility (Jo-Gro) has a powered
shredder which takes 3-yard FEL bucketfuls, shreds them, and conveyors
the finer materials out for FEL distribution. It's a diesel monster
10x15x10' high. I haven't seen a trammel there, but I'll be there
today and will ask for a tour if it's slow.

An overfull truckload costs me $11, so it's not worth it for me to
build one of your trammel goodies, but it looks like that was fun to
design and build. Questions: Do the swivel casters ever go wonky on
you? Why swivel vs fixed?


And I don't want to shovel 10-12 yards per year; I think I'm getting
lazy in my old age!


I grok that in its entirety.

Then you should have designed the unit to work with the FEL in the
first place, instead of the wooden bin underneath. Dump a bucketful
into the top, reposition the FEL bucket under it, then auger it into
the trommel to catch it in the FEL. Dump where needed.



I had to buy the rims, pulleys, belts, and pillow blocks.
Everything else came out of the "I might need this someday box". I
lucked out that the casters were swivels. I happened to check the
trueness of one wheel when they arrived; it was very good. After
cutting off the spokes, and then welding on them, one of them ended up
with more than a half inch of wobble. The swivel casters handle the
wobble nicely. It was the fixed idlers on top that I had to play
with. I ended up grinding them down both in width and diameter so
they wouldn't drag on the out of round areas of the rim.

All right, so it didn't take you long to figure out the one weakness
of my sifter that I'm not happy with, and that is how to handle the
sifted product. I posted 4 more pix of the thing in action.


Ayup. It's time to go aloft!


http://steveandlizthompson.shutterfly.com/

I picked the input height by swinging a shovel at a level that would
be comfortable all day long (riiiiight, maybe 20 years ago!). So


Yeah, back when we had energy to spare all day long. Oh, to be that
young again... wistful sigh


there wasn't much height available for the output box. And the
clearances between box and sifter frame are tight. And if the ground
isn't level, I can't slide the box in with the tractor, and etc.,
etc., etc.! The only good part is I can pick up the sifter with the
forks, with or without the box in place.


Forks?!? Oh, I thought that was some kluge you had for moving the box
around.


So I guess after I figure out a new input system, I'll have to figure
out a better output system. I think I'm going to try an auger input.
Other than using a treadmill, I don't think I could build an
inexpensive conveyor belt.


A conveyor would drop more than it would move. Forget it, unless you
use the auger to feed the conveyor, an added and redundant step.


HF has a 6 inch post hole auger for $50.
It even looks cheap in the picture! But would probably be perfect for
my needs.

http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/cta...emnumber=95973


Perfectamento! That's a bit large, so drive it more slowly. Build
the top box with angled sides, sloping onto the top of the cutaway
pipe the auger fits into, and it's self-priming/feeding.



I might as well say it before somebody else does: why the hell aren't
there grab hooks on the bucket? Um, they've been on my to-do list for
I forget how many years!


Who cares? It's going bye-bye anyway. Oh, I mean the sifter box,
not the FEL bucket. Grab hooks would have been a 20 minute project
which would have saved a couple hours the first time you used them.
How on Earth could you have overlooked them or procrastinated on so
needy a project, sir? tsk, tsk, tsk


Nice to know? The forks are all 2x6 channel from an old trailer
frame. They just hang from the top of the bucket where it rolls back.
They've never fall off. Simple.


Forks? What forks?


Oh, I stopped in JoGro today and what I thought was a shredder was
actually called a Power Trommel! Their basket was 10' long and about
6' in diameter. I think it has a shredder built in under the feeder
opening, though. You ought to hear that muthuh running!

So, what's the story on the missing paint job?

--
"To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of
ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical."
-- Thomas Jefferson