worntorn
06-14-2010, 06:17 PM
I have been given the job of coming up with one of these in Stainless. This photo was taken from a custom built bakery machine which is operating somewhere on the Eastern seaboard.
It is not an off the shelf item. It is used in the production of dinner rolls. Doughballs are formed in another part of the machine and fed onto this Separater drum by the paddles off to the side. I've already built the paddle sections in UHMW and they are being installed in the machine. The Separator drum has one cutout feeding to the front and one cutout feeding to the rear. Diameter is 15".
I'm building this Separator Drum for a Bakery Equipment supply company which builds all kinds of one-off units. It is a fun company to work for as the work is never boring, sometimes in UHMW, sometimes in hardwood and often in Stainless.
The owner of the company knows I like this kind of job and will take the time necessary to figure it out.
In the past he has tried hiring larger Machine Shops to do this kind of thing but it just doesn't work out well at $175 per hour. Not only is it expensive, the workers there are used to producing large volumes of fairly straight forward work in short periods of time, so they do not do well with one-offs.
The trick will be in getting the shapes correct so that everything times out perfectly, that is the dough ball has to roll out of the Separator at the perfect time.
First thing will be to build a mock up in Mild steel, see if it works (it won't) then make changes to get the thing functioning before making the final version in Stainless.
The TIG/Stick/plasma functions will all come in handy for this job.
It is not an off the shelf item. It is used in the production of dinner rolls. Doughballs are formed in another part of the machine and fed onto this Separater drum by the paddles off to the side. I've already built the paddle sections in UHMW and they are being installed in the machine. The Separator drum has one cutout feeding to the front and one cutout feeding to the rear. Diameter is 15".
I'm building this Separator Drum for a Bakery Equipment supply company which builds all kinds of one-off units. It is a fun company to work for as the work is never boring, sometimes in UHMW, sometimes in hardwood and often in Stainless.
The owner of the company knows I like this kind of job and will take the time necessary to figure it out.
In the past he has tried hiring larger Machine Shops to do this kind of thing but it just doesn't work out well at $175 per hour. Not only is it expensive, the workers there are used to producing large volumes of fairly straight forward work in short periods of time, so they do not do well with one-offs.
The trick will be in getting the shapes correct so that everything times out perfectly, that is the dough ball has to roll out of the Separator at the perfect time.
First thing will be to build a mock up in Mild steel, see if it works (it won't) then make changes to get the thing functioning before making the final version in Stainless.
The TIG/Stick/plasma functions will all come in handy for this job.