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Sunday, April 5, 2009

Crushed comb centrifuge

I have this idea that I cant get away from.

It started when I ordered a 5 gallon bucket filter set. It has 3 stages of filters to be used for filtering honey. Then I thought I could build a centrifuge that would use these 5 gallon buckets. I got this idea from a "merry-go-round" I saw at a Renaissance festival. It resembles a may pole, and carry about 20 people. This bucket centrifuge would be huge but not as large as the "merry-go-round" and it would take many buckets of freshly harvested honey.

As the thought continued to bother me I realized this would be a lot of expense and only a very few people would be able to harvest enough honey to use it. However, I did realize that if this device was built in and/or by a small village when not in use it could be used as a swing for children. It would be a blast! I guess if the village was keeping bees there might be enough honey to use this huge device, but not likely.

Then the other night I picket up a large mouth mason jar. Then picked up a small mouth mason jar. With the ring attached the small mouth will fit inside of the large mouth. No big revelation here I am sure many people already knew this.

Then I remembered a website I visited a site where the guy used a mesh as a filter. I think it was mosquito netting. He put this mesh under the ring of a mason jar then taped the mouths of the mason jars together and inverted them much like an hour glass. Over time the honey was filtered into the bottom jar.

I did like the idea but thought the process took too long and tape is a probably not to be had in some areas of the world. So if you have the large and small mouth jars you could do this same filter process without the tape by stacking the small on top of the large mouth jar. It would still take a lot of time.

So if I scaled down the centrifuge to hold two quart jars stacked on top of each other I could speed up the process. The centrifuge would hold up to 8 quarts of crushed comb honey and as few as 2 quarts. Well now that I have just written that it could be reduced to the smallest two jars that you could find.

So now it is time to build a prototype. From this prototype the design could be scaled up to use eight 5 gallon buckets with standard filters.

1 comments:

Curtis said...

As I was in my local hardware store "isle engineering" this project another thought occured to me. Why not use a bicycle rim it has ball berrings. So that is my next task. To find a bicycle for free that I can cut into pieces to build this.