My take on a CCVM Head - Gantry Style

[Andrew_90]

Hi,

Part of distilling is also the construction. I love the creative construction part. The pics are not great I have a bunch of other stuff to do. Was always going to do this then Demy's thread re-inspired me.

So the assembly. On the top is the gantry which exists of two inverted pulleys which allow for a drawstring to be positioned at a useful height. I will make a small winch for this purpose. At the base is the scale which indicates where the reflux coil position is so no guessing.

I need to do the final alignment still but you will get the gist from the pictures.



For the detail;



and. I cannot get black paint to stick to the brass indicator shoen at position 12, need to find and alternate method. Tried the torch but the color did not change enough. Note that the indicator is very close to the scale to avoid parallax errors as the head is some way above head height



For many this is way over the top, but not me. When I do a spirit run I want to do it on something I am proud to work on and I am not constantly wanting to fix poor workmanship.

[Twisted Brick]

Great job, Andrew. Love the top-notch quality, finish and attention to detail. Nice soft-shouldered dread to hang your hat on, too.

[Windy City]

Very cool and great looking work

[Setsumi]

I like the brass index and rod to show the position of the bottom of the coil. With time you will find that you will position it on 2 or 3 points. My guess is mostly around the second set of 2 holes from the bottom. The pulleys should work well to keep you from using a ladder. Well done.

[LWTCS]

Andrew_90 said:
"For many this is way over the top, but not me. When I do a spirit run I want to do it on something I am proud to work on and I am not constantly wanting to fix poor workmanship."

Really nicely done.
You're obviously a skilled mechanic. Your rebuild (or next build) is not going to be about getting better at fabrication.
You are also a thinker. Therefore your next build on the drawing board is going to be more about building yet an even better mouse trap. The real fun for you is the planning and engineering.

Picture a worm gear with hand wheel crank. And of course your indexing gauge.

(Insert Jedi Mind Trick here) You will build this because you can't help yourself........

[Andrew_90]

I like the brass index and rod to show the position of the bottom of the coil. With time you will find that you will position it on 2 or 3 points. My guess is mostly around the second set of 2 holes from the bottom. The pulleys should work well to keep you from using a ladder. Well done.

I hope you are right about the travel. If so I will chop off all the unwanted position scale and shorten the gantry which will make the head far more compact.

[Andrew_90]

Picture a worm gear with hand wheel crank. And of course your indexing gauge.

I had considered making a small hand winch much like on my boat trailer.

If Setsumi is correct and the travel is minimal then the worm gear arrangement will work. I have M12 taps and can cut the gear on my lathe and use a M12 thread as the worm. The nice thing about the worm is that it will not require a lock and it will be bi directional. Mmmmmmm thanks for the tip.

[Stonecutter]

Looking really good man! You’re quite the craftsman! Looking forward to more of your projects. One day I’ll grow a pair and start my own build

[The Baker]

I wish I could do work like that.
Really professional.

I cannot get black paint to stick to the brass indicator

Some sort of black tape?

Geoff

[Andrew_90]

I wish I could do work like that.

It is actually easier than you think, it takes time thought but I am a patient person by nature. Once you master clean solder joints, then they become easier to clean up and make make presentable, a file and a bit of fine emery cloth is all it takes. Marking out parts and filing to the line is also easy, it is just manual labor really. The other thing that has helped me a lot is to work on the still every evening, all the little bits done in the evenings quickly add up. I would previously leave everything to the weekends and run out of time.

I work from home so occasionally there is a lull in fire on the work front, then I will sneak into my workshop and do stuff on the still, my office has an interleading door to my workshop (garage) and I can keep and ear out for business activity.

I am itching to get her going, unchartered territory for me. Need to clean her out first, so this weekend will do the obligatory vinegar run followed by a cleansing run and then a low wines run to complete the process. Today will start a sacrificial batch of wash.

[Demy]

Thanks for quoting me, you did a great job and I like those who build!If you decide to cut it then (maybe) you not will be able to completely extract the coil, even if you decide to raise the whole coil and insert a cap (pot-still or collect queues quickly) you will not be ... better to leave it high perhaps ..

[kimbodious]

@Demy, they should be okay if they don’t have the nuts on the threads below the bottom plate. Should then just be able to lift the gantry and RC right off.

@Andrew_90, the cap on the RC is not necessary or an issue but it is nice work!

[Andrew_90]

@Demy, they should be okay if they don’t have the nuts on the threads below the bottom plate. Should then just be able to lift the gantry and RC right off.

@Andrew_90, the cap on the RC is not necessary or an issue but it is nice work!

The cap is to prevent dust ingress. Has no other functionality.

[ShineonCrazyDiamond]

@Demy, they should be okay if they don’t have the nuts on the threads below the bottom plate. Should then just be able to lift the gantry and RC right off.

@Andrew_90, the cap on the RC is not necessary or an issue but it is nice work!

The cap is to prevent dust ingress. Has no other functionality.

Weeeelllll.... not exactly. Technically with that cap, you can run either vapor management or cooling management. So long as it's air tight, instead of moving coil up and down, you adjust the cooling down and let "x" amount of vapor past.

[Andrew_90]

The cap is not air tight. The ID has been machined so that the cap, when on descent, will seat on the RC housing.

[Yummyrum]

Nice work Andrew . What sort of rope are you using , will it stretch ?

I have to confess , when I first saw the gantry on another thread , I thought you might go with a worm drive and stepper motor . Like the things on 3D printers to lift the bed up/down .

[Andrew_90]

Yummy,

I originally selected have fine braided steel fishing trace wire, but it slips on the pulleys and the pulleys don't turn. What you saw there was thin string. I need to get a suitable twine / rope / wire. Even if the rope stretches the relative RC position on the scale will remain the same.

I think I am going to have a go at a manual worm drive. There is something that tells me that if I cross over to electronics this will remove some of the allure of hand tweaking the process of a hand made product.

[Demy]

Yummy,

I originally selected have fine braided steel fishing trace wire, but it slips on the pulleys and the pulleys don't turn. What you saw there was thin string. I need to get a suitable twine / rope / wire. Even if the rope stretches the relative RC position on the scale will remain the same.

I think I am going to have a go at a manual worm drive. There is something that tells me that if I cross over to electronics this will remove some of the allure of hand tweaking the process of a hand made product.

Stay on the manual, it's not worth complicating things for such a simple and little repetitive operation. If you have a thread that tends to slip, you can use a trick that I thought in other situations, "dirty" your thread with a slight silicone veil.

[cob]

Nice work, Andrew_90 but your work forced me to dig out a box in the shop full of rack and pinions. thanks.

years ago I dug up a formula in an ancient book for making bronze black. I don't remember the formula,

and have no idea where my notes might be, but search black bronze and you may find something related.

I seems there were acids involved but that was a very long time ago. bronze and brass are close, put a

scrap in vinegar, acidic toilet cleaner, acidic tile cleaner, and see if you get a color change.

[Andrew_90]

@cob. Thanks will google as suggested.

[Andrew_90]

So I needed something to raise and lower the rope.

Made myself a gearbox today. I did not have any brass to I cut a gear from so I use a scrap of Nylon I had laying about. No the best as is is difficult to cut and a tap is not sharp enough nor does it have enough rake on the tool cutting faces. It did work but the cuts are a little rough as can be seen by the fact that I cannot clean the gear and there are no sharp defined edges.

Will get some brass this week and will remake the gear. I also need to make two bearings with thrust faces for the worm shaft.

The drum is 18.1mm and it takes 55 turns on the worm shaft to do one revolution. Thus means that one rpm will raise the RC by a 57mm or a fraxtion over 1mm per rotation of the handwheel.

I am going to increase the drum diameter to 25mm which will raise the RC by 78mm, probably all that I will need. This translated to 1.4mm for every rotation of the handwheel.

The back and sides were cut from 50 x 50 x 3mm Aluminium Angle to form the box. The worm was machined from M12 x 1.75mm threaded rod. The base is held together with 8 ea M3 CSK screws and nuts.



and



Will shorten the worm shaft later as well the the M3 screws.

[Setsumi]

That is super neat. How stiff is the gear? You would not want to roll back and dropping the RC during the run. Remember the RC will have weight from the coolant and feed lines. But I guess you have that covered already.

[Andrew_90]

You cannot roll the rope drum back, it will only wind back, the positive of a near 90o angle on the gears.

[Yummyrum]

Awesome. Andrew

Now you have me thinking about a winding post off my Bass Guitar

[Yummyrum]

BTW , how the bloody hell did you machine the worm gear ?
Thats even more interesting than the idea of the winch itself . Love to see a bit if your machining gear that you used to make that . You’re a talented lad .

[Andrew_90]

I have a small model makers lathe. Cannot do heavy work so I have to take small cuts at a time which takes ages.

Here is how it is done;

[Andrew_90]

Awesome. Andrew

Now you have me thinking about a winding post off my Bass Guitar

That's a very good idea, Place a pulley where the string would go.

[Yummyrum]

Oh thankyou thankyou thankyou .
Never would have guessed it was done that way , but makes perfect sense now.

I’m still a bit confused how you work out the diameter so that its an exact multiple of the tooth pitch … or do you just keep grinding until it looks good

[Andrew_90]

Two schools. Some keep going until it looks right. Some Measure. When I do the Brass one think I will measure.

[Andrew_90]

The formula in case you have a lathe handy.

N = Amount of teeth you require.
P = Pitch of the thread. In my case M12 x 1.75mm
Pi = 22/7

(54 x 1.75)/(22/7) = 30.068mm diameter.