fwiw - rod-mill project start

batches of a sulphur, sand,+, + mixture in a lidded paper drum. I built a wood frame to mount in line pairs of wringer washer rollers. IIRC the shafts ran in 5/8" pillow blocks with heater hose as a flexible coupling and powered by a 1/4 HP electric motor. To prevent lumps I threw in a half dozen river rocks @~3 lb. each. since almost everything but the pillow blocks came frome my personal stock of "Good Stuff", the total cost amounted to less than $20. Seems to me, I added a furniture caster at each end to avoid end travel. A latter employer used the same mixture but a commercial ball mill to mix it after I explained my method.

At 0655 I'm here at my table thinking of ways to have the drum spin / turn. Reckon it's going to be about 60RPM.

It's likely going to have to be very improvised. Thanks for the encouraging comment to say there must be a way.

Regards, Rich S

Gerry snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.ca writes: ....

At 0655 I'm here at my table thinking of ways to have the drum spin / turn. Reckon it's going to be about 60RPM.

It's likely going to have to be very improvised. Thanks for the encouraging comment to say there must be a way.

Regards, Rich S

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Perhaps you could suspend the drum from two (used?) automotive serpentine belts driven by the upper shaft. The motor drive on my lathe has a vee pulley and belt on the motor driving a large flat pulley, the friction of the softer inner rubber is enough without side walls. A vee belt normally grips because when bent the inner rubber is forced to expands against the pulley walls by the inelastic fibers in the outer part.

Serpentine belts also have softer rubber on the inside. Rubber alone without fiber reinforcement gives jerky start-stop motion.

The weight of the drum might give enough friction on the upper shaft to drive the belt. If not the shaft could be roughened or the belt pressed tighter with an idler or a heavy rod on top. I turned pulley grooves to match a serpentine belt with a 40 degree angled cutting bit.

More than one turn of rope on the drum will walk sideways. Multiple turns of string is simpler than a long splice though maybe not better. It does wrap around a small drive shaft more closely. It can be made stickier with rubber cement. Friction tape on the small shaft might last long enough for experiments

I think I'd grind the torch-cut rod ends smoother and bolt the strakes on at their ends to make them easy to swap. Using angle iron would reduce the strain on the screws by widening their base and eliminate tapping the strakes. Screws alone protruding in a little more than the rod radius might lift the rods while leaving the rocks at the bottom.

The vibratory feeder is an alternative to screening that's common for sorting and feeding manufactured parts in a desired orientation. As the product moves (hops) up the ramp it either passes or is knocked back into the bowl by barriers depending on its size and random positioning.

For a museum watching one work is a fascinating demo, the parts jiggle up the spiral ramp in defiance of gravity. The first one I saw fed GM HEI ignition modules to the test station in the correct position to make electrical contact.

At 0655 I'm here at my table thinking of ways to have the drum spin / turn. Reckon it's going to be about 60RPM.

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I didn't know that. That's why capstans/windlasses have a concave "waisted" shape - so the rope stays central, being unable to "climb" the taper? How does a "traditional" lathe work - a pedal-plank, a string with round-turn around the wooden piece beign turned, an a lath above to be a spring? The string "walks" back-and-forth "sideways"? Thanks, Rich S

I didn't know that. That's why capstans/windlasses have a concave "waisted" shape - so the rope stays central, being unable to "climb" the taper? How does a "traditional" lathe work - a pedal-plank, a string with round-turn around the wooden piece beign turned, an a lath above to be a spring? The string "walks" back-and-forth "sideways"? Thanks, Rich S

------------------------------ I would assume so. The only traditional lathe I've seen/used was driven by a foot pedal and flywheel, the mechanism adopted for early sewing machines. I have made and used a bow drill where the string winds up and down, just not very far.

The bow drill was for a carbide circuit board drill because the company's Dremel and floor drill press were in poor condition and broke them. I discovered that an arrow head point works well on bits for them since it scrapes in both directions without needing as much torque as a twist drill. Ancient tech for leading edge IC development.

Holtzapffel described traditional lathes in India. The lathe consisted of two stakes driven into the ground with nails through them for centers and the operator sat on the ground beside it. A solo operator pulled both ends of the drive cord with his hands while guiding the chisel with his foot, gripped between big and next toe. I suppose that was good for far-sighted artisans while near-sighted ones had their wife, kids or a slave pull the cord. Some variations:

On a traditional pole lathe of that sort the string does walk back and forth but as it only does a few turns before reversing it effectively stays in one place and in use the bodger may reposition it to get access to different parts of the piece being turned.

Got it... Thanks.

Definitely didn't know about that characteristic of "walking". It makes total sense, now you mention it. The one about how the bodger could move the string along the workpiece to free access to work where the string was before is another aspect of a good design I hadn't been reverent enough of.

That "warning" / point has saved me wasted time with a "solution" which wouldn't have worked.

Got it... Thanks.

Definitely didn't know about that characteristic of "walking". It makes total sense, now you mention it. The one about how the bodger could move the string along the workpiece to free access to work where the string was before is another aspect of a good design I hadn't been reverent enough of.

That "warning" / point has saved me wasted time with a "solution" which wouldn't have worked.

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The drum drive from a scrapped electric clothes dryer might work.

I didn't know that. That's why capstans/windlasses have a concave "waisted" shape - so the rope stays central, being unable to "climb" the taper? ... Rich S

---------------------- I built functional sailing ship models as a kid, the largest one a square rigger with a capstan for the anchor.

As well as I can remember from around 1960 my wooden pulleys had rounded grooves cut by my father's smallest lathe gouge. I think I used the parting chisel for depth and then rounded and widened them. The windmill multi loop string (butchers' twine?) drive lasted a month or two outdoors, until the wood-on-nail bearings rusted and wore out and needed rebuilding. The noise of tumbling rocks may have deterred birds from the vegetable garden.

That ship model had ballast consisting of iron filings cemented together by rusting it with ammonia. It's one recipe for "Beaumont's Egg" which is a filler to conceal defects in iron castings and a simple-to-make gasket for poorly aligned low pressure steam flange joints. Urine is said to work if you don't have ammonia. Leakage may have been one of the reasons for opposing high steam pressure.

The copper foil hull sheathing was a reject from the 1955 transatlantic submarine cable. Quite a bit of the central PE-clad wire, copper foil shielding and steel armor wire didn't pass inspection or impedance testing, more than they could sell as scrap, and Dad brought some home for my projects.

Jim - thanks for the "911metallurgist" link about tin assaying. I knew of "911metallurgist" and for sure the index page of the website - but had not a thousandth part of any idea how much stuff there is there and how high quality it is. I'm finding loads and loads of very relevant interest, now I know to look. Rich S

More on drive for rod-mill - or ball-mill...

I found this on YouTube:

Molino californiano o de pisones EDGAR VILLAVICENCIO

Clearly it's South America (?).

They use 2 countershafts - hence 3 stage speed reduction - from "Honda GX(?)" motor to California stamps. Using flat-belts.

If they do that, with likely huge collective and individual experience, and ability to improvise, it looks highly likely that is the best achievable non-megabucks solution.

Rich S

They use 2 countershafts - hence 3 stage speed reduction - from "Honda GX(?)" motor to California stamps. Using flat-belts.

If they do that, with likely huge collective and individual experience, and ability to improvise, it looks highly likely that is the best achievable non-megabucks solution.

Rich S

------------------------------------------ In the USA the inexpensive alternative to a new Honda GX(?) is this:

The L095 Lovejoy jaw coupler that had been adequate driving the log splitter's low inertia hydraulic pump tore up its rubber spider on the sawmill, likely from lugging at low speed against the inertia of the motorcycle wheels when the belt tension clutch didn't release, a new pulley needed to wear in smoother. A larger L100 coupler has held up well. The horsepower and RPM to shaft torque calculation needed to be adjusted for the uneven power flow of the larger single cylinder gasoline engine. Shaft diameters also need to be large enough to survive the peak torque.

This is a power level where surplus and hardware store components for small electric motor drives become inadequate. I've broken a cord in a vee belt driving the tractor's added hydraulic pump, under load the belt's remaining cords rolled it a quarter turn to the outside and it slipped on the pulleys. I don't know enough of conditions to estimate the stress when it failed.

My machine tools allowed me to adapt replacement parts when my original guesses based on whatever was available were wrong. A common problem has been pulleys held by setscrews slipping and needing either a flat filed on the shaft or a milled keyway added. With inexpensive found parts the shaft and pulley key sizes may not match and require a key sized for the wider slot and milled to fit the narrower, or an inch/metric adapter.

These cut keyways in pulleys but you need a slotted plug to guide them which you may have to make if non-standard.

More on drive for rod-mill - or ball-mill...

I found this on YouTube:

Molino californiano o de pisones EDGAR VILLAVICENCIO

Clearly it's South America (?).

They use 2 countershafts - hence 3 stage speed reduction - from "Honda GX(?)" motor to California stamps. Using flat-belts.

If they do that, with likely huge collective and individual experience, and ability to improvise, it looks highly likely that is the best achievable non-megabucks solution.

Rich S

---------------------------------- Around here the dealers in used industrial and commercial machinery have or are closing as manufacturing vanishes. Trump's attempt to revive it is overdue but I doubt the parasitic elements that drove it offshore will permit regrowth. I'm glad I saw it coming from my industrial R&D vantage in the 80's and stocked up to build my projects.

Last month I bought some more channel iron pallet rack at twice the previous price and listened to the yard man list all the closures and rant on our decline.

I've seen videos of "artisanal" gold mining operations in South America. The videos are/were motivated by trying to find an alternative to using mercury to extract the gold, but anyway... They show sheds with cast concrete mountings for lines of ball-mills - drums about 800mm diameter. Drive is from a line-shaft by belts running one to each mill. The mill is on an axial axle, so not suspended from the belt. For what it's worth...

I've seen videos of "artisanal" gold mining operations in South America. The videos are/were motivated by trying to find an alternative to using mercury to extract the gold, but anyway... They show sheds with cast concrete mountings for lines of ball-mills - drums about 800mm diameter. Drive is from a line-shaft by belts running one to each mill. The mill is on an axial axle, so not suspended from the belt. For what it's worth...

-------------------------------- The only reason I suggested suspending the drum from the belt is to minimize shaft and bearing requirements since you are limited without a metal lathe, as I once was.

There is special concrete for mounting machinery:

I've seen videos of "artisanal" gold mining operations in South America. The videos are/were motivated by trying to find an alternative to using mercury to extract the gold, but anyway...

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Panning or hydraulic gravity separation is a proven alternative as long as the ore has been crushed fine enough to separate the rock from the metal, mechanically or by tumbling stones in a stream bed. It's also used for lead and tin.

Thanks for links.

Recognising "virtue signalling" as a way of getting a front seat in the secular afterlife - only if the separation method gives more return for effort will the "alternative" method get used - displacing the mercury method used for centuries in South America. I must finish watching about "The Monado Method". It was found that gold miners in that village used the fronds of a particular tree as the means to catch gold in a sluice - rather like a "highbanker" used in North America by prospectors if I understand right.