1. Home
  2. ⏣ General Metalworking
  3. Vacuum cleaner principles

Vacuum cleaner principles

I am going to go out and start vacuuming pecans this coming week. I guess I have about six 55 gallon barrels worth lined up.

I have a 2.2hp 2.5" shop vac now, but want to make something that will do more than one thing at a time. Right now, this picks up everything, and I have one more step to separate the hulls. I'd like to leave them on scene, unless the homeowner wants them cleaned up, for a fee.

Mainly, I only want to transport whole nuts, and as little hulls and other trash as possible. For this, I have figured out some screens and filters.

I want to vacuum up the nuts in their hulls, plus the hulls, and have only the pecans make it to the bed of the truck, and into a box. How would I rig up a vacuum so that the hard pieces do not go through the vanes of the vacuum?

I want to keep this very simple, so that I only have a vacuum hose, and a holding box, and the ability to keep all other trash out. Anyone know of any diagrams or sites where this is addressed?

I got ahead of myself. I put out an ad to see if anyone wanted any pecans, and yes, they do. A LOT of people. But I had to go to Vegas for a few days and do some real estate stuff, and therefore .............

So, I was thinking today as I drove, and now want to cobble together some things until I get a machine running smoothly. I kept coming up with "stuff", then kept remembering that I really want to keep it simple, and if I can find a way to do this through diverting simple vacuum hoses, that would do the trick, as far as collecting goes.

Help appreciated.

Steve

Reply to
Steve B
Loading thread data ...

don't reinvent the wheel. Use a centrifical separator. I have a 7.5 horse vacuum for a shop with this ahead of the motor/vacuum assembly.

Reply to
Karl Townsend

Karl Townsend fired this volley in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Karl, don't you re-invent the wheel.

Richard, instead of cooking up hair-brained ideas about passing full- sized tree nuts throught the blades of a high-speed centrifugal fan, why not consider looking up how nut shelling equipment actually works. Likely, any decent-sized college with an agricultural program should have some books on the subject. You'll probably find a lot of stuff excerpted on the web.

It's kind of useless diving into a project, planning to use a vacuum cleaner to do a job, and not even understanding how a vacuum cleaner works!

Lloyd

Reply to
Lloyd E. Sponenburgh

I would take the names of the main manufacturers, and do a patent search using the Google Patents search engine. By now, all the basic patents have long expired, the older patents will likely be simple enough for you to cobble together.

Joe Gwinn

Reply to
Joe Gwinn

Shop vacs don't pass the debris thru the fan.

MikeB

Reply to
BQ340

Gee, Lloyd, i dunno. Just trying to keep up with the spirit of this place? Isn't that what we do here?

:)

Reply to
Richard

"Steve B" fired this volley in news:kgapgd$o1r$ snipped-for-privacy@speranza.aioe.org:

That's bull. I made one search and found the complete maintenance diagrams, parts lists, and principles of operation of an automatic cracker.

ONE search term, one time "pecan shelling machines".

Vibratory screening and air de-dusting/debris-ing are common, straightforward mechanical processes common in most industries. LLoyd

Reply to
Lloyd E. Sponenburgh

BQ340 fired this volley in news:5128f676$0$44267 $ snipped-for-privacy@ngroups.net:

I'm perfectly aware of that, but he thinks it does. He has no concept of a regenerative blower.

Lloyd

Reply to
Lloyd E. Sponenburgh

There are several vendors at flea markets around here with the machines. A polite request and they may give you a detailed look at how they work, and what problems crop up. They might even buy all the Pecans.

Aren't crushed Pecan shells used to blast rust off steel?

Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

Some "Dust Collectors" do send the incoming debris through the fan, so they can run it into a simple cloth bag. But they are made for sawdust only, you start slamming hard and large junk through the impeller and it isn't going to be happy.

The more expensive Dust Collectors at least send the debris into a proper cyclonic seperator via suction first to drop out the big crap, and the impeller just passes the fines on to the bag house.

If you're trying to pick up big stuff like nuts off the ground, this is what I'd be looking at. And make the shelling a seperate step.

The more important thing to check on with a Shop Vac is it's 100% Bypass - even after the dust filter you don't want to send any of the exhaust air through the electric motor for cooling.

The really cheap vacuum motors pull the exhaust air through the blower motor for cooling, and between the bearings and the brushes and inpingement on & chemical deterioration of the windings, the dirt and vapors kills them fast.

-->--

Reply to
Bruce L. Bergman (munged human readable)

PolyTech Forum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.