Gearing Old Concrete Mixer

Treemonkey1000 · Feb 26, 2008

Maybe try right clicking on the picture file. Click on Properties. Then click on Advanced. If your set up is like mine it might say Compress or Encypt attributes. Click on Compress contents to save to disk. Then save that picture some place that you can find it or rename it so that you can find the compressed one

BobInMN · Feb 26, 2008

OK, here is the pictures. I hope this works.

Mundy · Feb 27, 2008

My mixer looks simular to yours with the exception mine has a U shaped "yoke" around the drum that makes the pivot point be almost 1/2 way between the gear bottom and the mouth of the drum. In fact as I am typing I am realizing that if you let the release on my dump and let go of the wheel the drum goes to a vertical position and no cement spills out unlike yours where it flops all the cement on the ground..

As for yours, The best way would be as someone else metioned to change the pivot so it is more toward the center of gravity.

Mine also uses a ships wheel style dump wheel. It is almost 4' in Diameter. This wheel allows very precice control of dump. It being a wheel you do not have that moment a heavy loaded lever reaches the top of its arc and you have to go from pull from one side to push from the other to restrain the load on the leaver. Also if you slip and it flops you have a spinning wheel rather than a swinging bat.

srjones · Feb 27, 2008

How about a spring loaded cylinder like ones used on a hatchback lift or an automatic door closer. It would slow the the decent and help you out on the ascent.

CATMAN · Feb 27, 2008

A counterweight looks the easiest to me. Can you attach anything to that rear stub shaft behind the tub, then add barbell weights to that shaft(or a welded extension of that shaft). Heck, barbell weights are round, so even if they rotated, it probably won't be a problem. Great thing about that kind of weight, is that it is easy to adjust or add more. I would probably add even weight that the mixer would balance at a 1/2 full load with the drum horizontal. This may require a stop chain up front that would keep the drum at its mixing angle when empty(Counterweight would be on the "heavy side" when empty). Actually, forget the stop chain, just weld a piece of metal from the stationary leg of the stand up to the your current lever as a "stop".

If you don't like the counterweight at the rear of the drum, you could add metal at a downward 90 degree angle from your current lever and add your weight there. As the drum begins to tilt(to dump) then that weight begins to rise from that downward position.

BobInMN · Mar 13, 2008

This what I ended up doing. I took the timing gears out of an old engine. This reduced the effort to a 1:2 ratio. Then I took an old 20" split rim for the turn wheel. Cut down an old trailer house axle to mount the mixer on. I had to do a lot of scrounging to come up with all the parts. I have a total of $8.50 that I had to pay for steel I didn't have on hand. If it is still to hard to control when I dump I have the capability of using a cheater bar in the wheel spokes. I know I will need a bigger motor, but this is all I could find for now (funds are low).