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Originally Posted by charlz It would appear all the gears are in the lower portion of the unit. Perhaps they just have to change out those gears to make it take a 540rpm input? I don't know if there is enough space in there? Wouldn't this effectively reduce the horsepower getting to the press portion though? Not sure if I could run one with my 16hp b7100 or not. |
Perhaps they change the base gearing, but adding an additional 4:1 ratio. the vendor I asked the questions of got back to me and said they do not, at least his supplier does not make any base gear modifications. Pellet pro's may be having something custom built for a
PTO application. The base price for the smaller press without motor is under $1K and since you are building the
3PH carryall for it, it would probably be best to put together a 4:1 pully arrangement to get the mill input up to 2200
RPM from 540.
As for
HP needed, they run these easilly with a 15HP diesel. What is
HP?
HP is torque, or work performed over time. Lets say you have 1FT/LB of torque on a shaft turning 100RPM, and that equals a given
HP. Double the torque at the same
RPM(twice as much work being done), you double the
HP. Double the
RPM at the same torque(also twice as much work being done in a given time period) and you also double the
HP. A gearbox is a torque multiplier/divider. lets say you have that same 1FT/LB-100RPM and you run it into a 2:1 gearbox. Your output will be 2FT/LB of torque, but at 50
RPM. Those two changes cancel each other out, so the net
HP change is 0. There are of course friction losses in the gearbox, so you will loose a little
HP in the form of gearbox heat.
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Originally Posted by charlz It would seem that drying the source material, if required, would be the biggest and most expensive part of the challenge.
there is a video on youtube that looks like it is one of these mills, those pellets look very hot coming out. In the video on the PelletPros site those pellets do not look nearly as hot. I wonder if that is a factor of input material moisture? |
Yes, probably a factor of moisture and also of mill speed. You squeeze anything it gets hot though from compression and from friction passing thru the dies. I think they need a certain ammount of moisture to form a good pellet though, so even if the source material is dry, I think they may need a final dry after pelletized.
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Originally Posted by charlz Next trick is storing the pellets. By my calculations you would need about 4.5 (55gallon) drums per ton. Drums would be easy to move around with the tractor. I guess you could also use those fabric feed bags that handle 1000 or 2000lbs if your tractor could handle it.
I wonder how well the pellets hold up mechanically? Obviously the less you handle them the better but you wouldn't want them to turn back into sawdust in the stove. |
Well the pellets I buy are made and dried, then bagged and thrown 50 to a pallet then wrapped and put in a wharehouse by forklift. then again by forklift to a truck and moved probably a thousand miles bouncing down the highway where they are unloaded by forklift. then again by forklift to my truck, then unloaded by hand to my storage area. This is a minimum af what they are moved and seem to hold up well. Homemade pellets would probably endure far less movement.
That vendor also quoted me a price of around $1K for a bare hammermill, but I am guessing it would also need a step up drive system to get from 540 to around 2000
RPM.