The MixMaster

[BigSwede]

Couldn't think of a better name.

This is the hardware that came from http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... 15&t=48599 - a modification of a brilliant design by YHB. Thank you, sir.

Without rehashing the entire thread, this thing can do it all except CM. We have LM, VM, and pot still modes selectable by a clever slide valve. I modeled it using Rhino 3D to ensure everything would come together properly. In use, a stainless slide valve, closed on one end, can be positioned exactly in the vapor column to force the vapor into a big product condenser, my jumbo shotgun - http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... 50&t=47406 - this makes it a pot still, zero reflux. With the valve at the other extreme, we have 100% reflux, and a LM head just above can (if installed) execute pure LM duties.

With the valve partway, it's VM. Reflux ratios can be varied through the entire theoretical range.

From the top, valve closed. The vapors must travel upwards to the LM head and/or reflux condenser.

Valve 1/2 way open... vapors are being partially diverted into the 2" copper tube to the right, leading to a product condenser.

The valve body is a tricky piece. It must contain a full 2" Cu pipe installed perpendicular, so I made it from a 2" coupler and 2 copper ferrules. This will leave a thin web of metal after it's bored open for a 2" cross-member.

Next came the slide valve, made from a short piece of 304 SS tube (2" OD) and a SS disk soldered into one end. This required a huge boring on one side, and the end cap was drilled and tapped for the adjustment screw, a 1/4" X 20 stainless threaded shaft.

The shaft is installed into a Pb-free brass compression fitting installed into the end of a normal 2" copper cap. Two viton o-rings keep the shaft secured and sealed inside the compression fitting. I had huge grief trying to make a shaft and valve that was straight and true. This thing slides inside a 2" copper with hardly any room to spare, and things tend to bind up badly when everything isn't lined up perfectly.

The other issue is that the valve must not be allowed to rotate. If it does, it can theoretically seal off the vapor path to the boiler, and that equals big boom... In this state, as pictured, it CAN rotate. Had to fix that, and that was the hardest thing to do properly to this point.

[BigSwede]

The solution was a pair of 1/8" stainless shafts that were secured on the same end as the main shaft itself. This does two things... it definitely prevents rotation, and it also forces the slide valve onto an accurate, linear path.

Inside the cap are a pair of small stainless slugs that accept a screw each from the outside, and support the two 1/8" rods. Two holes in the slide valve accept the shafts, and everything lines up nicely.

I added a temporary handle, and ran the valve back and forth to ensure all was OK. It'd be nice to have a big bronze or stainless handle, but this thing is going to get hot, so I'll either use this cheesy black plastic handle, or make something fancy from linen phenolic.

The final test was to install the entire assembly into a standard (type M) copper tube, and run it back and forth. In the end, I had to knock off about 0.008" from the slide valve diameter to make it work, but as it is now, it'll run full travel with no issues.

Next up is going to be the hardest part, boring the valve body 2.125" for the valve cross-piece. Big cutting forces, and little support once most of the cut is done. I think what I'll have to do is solder an intact 2" tube through the coupler body, the bore it out from both top and bottom only after it's soldered. Otherwise, it's going to fall to pieces.

Got to figure out how to route vapors to the product condenser. I think I'm going to use a long-sweep 2" elbow, which will hopefully take it away from the column enough. Even then, I'll have to route distillate away from the column and boiler. Might need a surge arrestor or something similar, as it's going to be 2" wide the entire way.

Anyway, thanks for the input and suggestions. I think this rig will do it all in terms of reflux. Once I gain experience, I want to tackle a flute. Love the melding of form and function in those beauties!

[Sungy]

Nice work. Love to see that kind of detail. The rivets look sooooo cooool

[BigSwede]

Nice work. Love to see that kind of detail. The rivets look sooooo cooool

Sungy, I've been admiring your fabrication since I joined, so TY. Your cooling tower is something I want (and need) to emulate.

The rivets do serve a purpose. I've been using them more and more. The more stuff riveted together, the easier the solder job. Last major solder effort I did, there were only two parts that needed to be retained in place with stainless wire. Everything else was held with rivets, or with mechanical joints.

I think I'm going to rivet the Cu ferrules to that coupler valve body. This upcoming solder job will be as critical as anything I've ever done.

[Bob Loblaw]

Swede - I am going to move in next door to you so I can hang out and watch. Seriously cool stuff

[Bushman]

Very nice, and I thought I was the only one on this forum that uses Rhino. I used to do some of the teacher training on the software for our state and did a lot of the beta testing. Nice job on the drawings as well.

[Hound Dog]

Swede, the master coppersmith..........

[Halfbaked]

So Nice! When will it be ready for testing? How will you be testing?

[bearriver]

Is it off topic to make a post containing little more than drool?

If so, then you can just ban me now.

[Halfbaked]

Your gone!!!!!!!!!! I'm gone also!

[BigSwede]

Thanks fellas - I'm blessed with a cool wife, time, and tools.

Bushman - Love Rhino! It's not quite Solidworks, but it does what I need it to do. The learning curve was steep, but now I consider it indispensable for design work.

All - I've been active in a bunch of forums, all of them craft or fabrication-related in one way or another, and I'm used to snapping a lot of pictures while I work. I'm a bit conflicted... don't want to flood the forum with too many pics, but if you guys want more "en-route" pics, I'll be happy to oblige. If not, I'll throttle back and just show the end result.

My guess is all my main components will be done this month, then I just have to plumb for water and set everything up.

For fun, I replaced the crummy plastic handle on my beautiful LM needle valve with bronze. Got to be consistent. I want this thing to look like something built in 1910. No plastics back then!

Before:

Raw stock - big chunk o' bronze. Thank goodness I bought a LOT of bronzes, brasses, and some copper years ago, back when it was much cheaper.

Machining - cuts taken with a dividing head allows even scallops.

And she's done. A couple of enjoyable hours start to finish. Soothes the nerves!

[Bushman]

BigSwede, very nice wish I had your fabricating skills! Do you do any CNC work as that is one of the beauty's to Rhino it interacts with just about every industrial software on the market. I did a lot of tool path's converting Rhino files to my CAM software then to my CNC package. Before retiring I did a lot of protyping with a 3D printer.

[BigSwede]

BigSwede, very nice wish I had your fabricating skills! Do you do any CNC work as that is one of the beauty's to Rhino it interacts with just about every industrial software on the market. I did a lot of tool path's converting Rhino files to my CAM software then to my CNC package. Before retiring I did a lot of protyping with a 3D printer.

I actually have a little CNC bench mill but I never use it. It's weird, I find that by the time I post-process the Rhino into CAM (G-code), set everything up, tentatively push the button and hold my breath, I find I could have made 3 of them manually.

I never do anything in quantity. I've had guys ask for 30, 100 of something, and I always say no. It ruins the fun. If I ever did bulk, CNC would shine. So obviously would creating a part that simply cannot be done manually, but I've found there's not much that can't be done with some imaginative workholding.

Cheers, and TY.

[Hound Dog]

I will say it again Swede, you do some nice work. If that handle transfers to much heat for you and you don't want cheesey plastic, pick up a piece of exotic wood and mill something similar out of it. It would eliminate the heat transfer and be nice looking for your grade A work.

[White_Lightning_Rod]

Please flood us with all the pictures you can, well worth the bandwidth!

I second this notion, keep the pics coming, all you care to post, beautiful work, definately drool worthy.

[googe]

Beautiful work mate , and yes more pics!, I'd rather look at a thread with pics then read lol.

[backraft]

great stuff, any more pics of ur still

[jedneck]

PORN
Beautiful work. l would use white oak for you knobs. I have some I will donate if you pay shipping.

[Halfbaked]

I'm a bit conflicted... don't want to flood the forum with too many pics, but if you guys want more "en-route" pics, I'll be happy to oblige. If not, I'll throttle back and just show the end result.

Flood the forum with pics! Throttle up! Crank em out!

[T-Pee]

...definately drool worthy.

I'll add to the comments in my own manner by simply stating...

tp (understated)

[BigSwede]

I appreciate the comments guys, many thanks. I just love metal work, have as long as I remember.

Knocked off a BIG (and a bit scary) hurdle today; successfully bored a 2" coupler straight through the side a full 2.125" for a regular 2" pipe to make the valve body. This procedure leaves only a thin web of metal to support itself during the cut.

Back earlier, I described the valve body... a short vertical section of coupler between 2 copper tri-clamp ferrules. Another piece of 2" goes straight through that for the stainless slide valve. Basically, a "tee" section. For the valve to work, everything's got to be plumb, square, all that jazz.

I decided to rivet the two ferrules to the coupler. This adds massive strength and rigidity. The ferrules and coupler were mounted in a dividing jig, and the rivet holes drilled 1/8".

The rivets were annealed. They go from inside out, and the pre-formed rivet head rests in a little formed anvil mounted on a big piece of steel round. Hand tools from the outside upset the rivet bodies, hold them in place, and then, after another annealing, another punch rounds them off. This next pic shows them after the first "upset" and then annealed. Got to round them yet. We'll see finished rivets later.

Now came the scary part for me, the big hole boring into the coupler. Most of us think copper pipe is round. To a machinist, it's not, it's grossly out of round, and to make this work properly, I took the section of 2" I'd need and skim cut it in a lathe, took off about 5 thousandths. This made it properly round for the next operation.

I'm not sure why, but these pics (the lighting, maybe?) make everything look like brass.

For this big cut, I needed a freakishly firm support that would also not compress the piece. Normally, you'd stick this in a big vise and have at it, but if I did that, it'd collapse as the cut neared completion. So I supported it on two ends. One end, the dividing head, the other, I bolted a regular 2" tri-clamp cap to a big angle iron. Shoved the whole thing together, then used a regular 2" clamp to hold it. Worked perfect.

[BigSwede]

I used a hole saw to start the hole, but no hole saw made will make the hole I needed to pull this off, so I used a boring head.

A boring head is a single point cutting tool that rotates and is adjustable for infinite diameter, so if you need a 1.772" hole, it'll do it. It's also nice in that I can work as slow as I need with light cuts.

Getting close... by this point, I'm going slow and measuring like a fool to make sure I don't go oversized. Piles of gooey copper swarf build up beneath the cut and inside the valve body.

Near the final diameter, about 1.120", I started to try the pipe. Finally took a cut where the pipe would "wring" in with some twisting. I'm not going to lie, did a little happy dance right there. This was a tough operation.

Note the shreds of ductile copper hanging off... the edge there is like a knife.

After some clean up, took her outside to cuddle and drink a nice beverage this evening. Couldn't be happier with how it turned out. This thing is probably gas tight right now with no solder at all.

Next step... the through-pipe is solid. I need to solder it in place before anything else, because I need to take that same boring tool and bore through the entire valve body top to bottom, so the slide valve can work. But this was a big hurdle. The remainder is pretty routine stuff.

I'm really liking having parts fit/hold together by themselves prior to soldering. It makes the solder op so much easier, and all we are doing with the solder is simply sealing it, rather than using solder to hold parts together.

Hope y'all had as good an evening as I did! Cheers!

[Halfbaked]

WOW! It looks like it grew like that. AwESOME

[BigSwede]

TY halfbaked. This is the sort of assembly that makes me glad I splurged on a roll of 1/32" super-fine solder. I should be able to sneak some into that joint and have it flow nice and slick all around the cross piece.

I'm also happy in that the output of the head is a tri-clamp 90 degrees to the column, so I can angle the product condenser as needed to get it away from the column and boiler. Looking forward to finishing this puppy.

Got a pump coming for water, and some black iron pipe hangers that'll allow the whole thing to come together well-supported.

[still_stirrin]

BigSwede,

That's a work of art. Absolutely beautiful. Just reading through your manufacturing process is a valuable lesson. The attention to detail helps us all understand the processes. But nobody can work the art like you. Thanks for sharing with us.

[Red Rim]

Light years ahead of the rest of us. Please keep the pics coming. I am mashing my corn with the drool hanging out of my mouth on this one.

[BigSwede]

Thanks fellas, I appreciate that.

I made some nice progress today; the head is about 70% done. The setup I used to bore that big hole cross-wise through the valve body worked so well, I decided to use it again to bore out the 2" cross-piece before soldering it in place. To reiterate, the little stubby piece sits vertically on a packed column. Above it is a reflux condenser, or a LM had AND a reflux condenser, if I want to do LM and pull fores or simply not do VM.

The vertical piece (I call it the valve body) accepts the 2" tube perfectly, but the 2" tube, when it's in there, needs to be open on the vertical as well as the horizontal path. Basically, I needed a true cross piece, open in four directions. I'll call the cross piece the slide tube, since the SS valve slides in there.

Step one - soldered yet another copper ferrule onto the slide tube. Love them ferrules, the wallet does not. But they sure are pretty. Very well made, too. Anyway, with a good fit, it didn't take much solder.

So, back onto the mill, I roughed out the slide tube with a hole saw. I was frankly shocked at how well a cheap hole saw cut through. While the cut was ragged and certainly not round, it went through without much fuss. This was a 1.875" hole... goal is a 2.000" hole.

The rigid setup rocked, it came out clean and nice. I clean up copper after machining or soldering in the kitchen sink with 400 wet-dry paper and scotch-brite + soap.

The moment of truth... the tube slid back in and formed a perfect 4-way junction, AND the slide valve still moved smooth as can be.

[BigSwede]

I intentionally made all the "interfaces" - rubbing parts, threads, rods, a bit loose. There'll be no lube in this thing, just hot ethanol vapor, and I don't want anything to bind.

I designed the beast so that with the product condenser removed, if I unscrew the SS slide valve, it'll come right out the right side of the slide tube if I ever need to do maintenance.

One other thing I noticed, there is a good 1/2" of valve movement where there's no opening yet to the product condenser... you can see it in the first picture. I think I'm going to scallop out that area of stainless so the moment the slide valve enters the vapor path, it'll start to draw for VM.

All that remains... solder the control shaft cap onto the slide tube, solder up the valve body itself, give her a nice buff, and start plumbing for cooling water. Can't wait to give it a whirl.

I think for the first run or two, I'm going to do pure LM and get a feel for that part of it. If I don't understand LM, I certainly won't understand VM, and I don't want to flail away between the two modes, running the valve back and forth without a clue.

[Halfbaked]

How bought doing the first run in pot mode then moving to reflux to see the difference. So, now the boiler.......... What are your plans on that? I assume electric because of what you had said in a controller thread instead of gas?

[Sungy]

Man I'm green with envy...Love what you can do with the right tools in the hands of a master. Well done!