What's the best bubble cap?

[still livin]

Thinking about making bubble caps for my flute, just for something different to play around with, currently using perforated plates. Been looking through old posts and some use small caps and some use 1 big cap. What's the best way to go ?

[Kegg_jam]

Had all the stuff to make 5 small caps. Had it all laid out and was going to start cutting. It was late and I was tired. Said screw this I'm just gonna make one big cap!

Seems to work just fine for me. Wish I'd made it a little bigger though. Still can. Just don't have any bigger pipe.

[Danespirit]

Making a plated column with bubblecaps, should be as good as perforated.
The one thing you want to ensure, is that you have got the most possible "contact time" in your liquid bath.
The longer vapor has contact into the liquid, the more efficient your plate will be.
IMHO a single cap or several small ones, are a choice of personal preference.
The design...slotted, holes drilled or grooves filed out, should be up to what you like to see...
Take a look at the flute thread...there are several discussions about caps there.

[pfshine]

I have made both and the one big cap isn't as efficient as a bunch of smaller ones. That being said I will only make large single caps in the future. Also think about putting your downcomer through the cap to save plate room. Kinda like this.

[shadylane]

Just my uneducated guess.
Bubble caps ain't real particular, if there's enough vapor to make them bubble, their happy.
If you blow through them a lot harder then better downcomers, traps and a deeper liquid bed is needed.
Or all the above and bigger/more bubblers. I like the idea of a central downcomer like pfshine is using, it's balanced the only other alternative to one big bubbler in a small column would be an external downcomer.

[still livin]

Thanks for the input guys. What size are those caps pfshine?

[pfshine]

Made them with 2" pipe.

[googe]

Never tried multi caps, always just one big one, can't imagine much difference, havnt read about much difference?. I'll post a vid soon of my caps running, doing a run now, maybe someone with multi caps could post a vid to compare?.

[googe]

[still livin]

Sweet, thanks for posting googe. How many plates do you run with the big caps?

Pfshine, your caps are just your own variation of the new "pro" caps that were posted on here a while back?

If you used the center downcomers,you could probably even go to 2.5" caps.

[pfshine]

I didn't know they were a thing till after I made them and somebody told me sd made caps like that. I really thought it was something new. Stupid me I know. You would not want to do 2.5" caps in a 3" column, would be perfect in a 4" though.

[bearriver]

This was an interesting discussion: http://ww.homedistiller.org/forum/viewt ... 17&t=49702" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

[Kegg_jam]

Perfect timing Bear. Since I'm just getting into caps that was another good read.

[still livin]

Thanks for posting bear, I read that when I was reading through past threads for info.
If you went with 2.5" caps and a 3/4" center downtube,would you still have enough plate surface area?

[pfshine]

Here is a pic of 2.5" in a piece of 3". Definitely not big enough.

[pfshine]

And 2.5" in a 4" cap. I didn't have a spare piece of 4" laying around. Much better fit.

[pulsetech]

large caps vs small caps interests me. i have only run small caps
the small caps that i have are 1 inch. so the outer circumference of the cap is 79.8 mm x 5 = 399 mm
a 2 1/2 inch cap has a circumference of 199 mm. pretty much half of the surface area to be slotted.
i wonder with bigger caps like that do the slots need to be bigger to lower the velocity ?
probably should be disused in Flute Talk

[YHB]

The one thing you want to ensure, is that you have got the most possible "contact time" in your liquid bath.

In an effort to increase the contact time I have added a couple of guides to my 35mm Caps (2.1\2 Column).

The spout directs all the condensate to one location on the plate, the condensate then has to travel 180 degrees round the cap. There are no shortcuts to the plate below for the condensate to take.

Not tried yet, still building column.

[LWTCS]

This was an interesting discussion: http://ww.homedistiller.org/forum/viewt ... 17&t=49702" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

In hindsight, this was a particularly jolly good read.

Criticisms about the quality of spirit produced have been found to be completely unfounded.
Criticisms/observations about any of the various design elements are reasonable. There is always a subjectively better way to build something.

[Kegg_jam]

large caps vs small caps interests me. i have only run small caps
the small caps that i have are 1 inch. so the outer circumference of the cap is 79.8 mm x 5 = 399 mm
a 2 1/2 inch cap has a circumference of 199 mm. pretty much half of the surface area to be slotted.
i wonder with bigger caps like that do the slots need to be bigger to lower the velocity ?
probably should be disused in Flute Talk

Dang, you had to go burst my bubble. I was preoccupied with maintaining a certain size vapor path that I hadn't thought of the amount of slots that would be lost.

So 6 X 1" caps gives you about 2.4 times the circumference of 1 X 2.5" cap. So that means more slots.

Someone might double check my math because I haven't had enough coffee yet.

Flute talk is great but man it can be hard to get through in places.

[still livin]

Pfshine, I don't think I would go bigger than 2.5" in a 4" column, what do you use for the bath depth on the single big caps?


YHB, cool designs, I was thinking if I went with center down comers I would make some kind of spout to direct the flow from the center.

[bearriver]

This was an interesting discussion: http://ww.homedistiller.org/forum/viewt ... 17&t=49702" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

In hindsight, this was a particularly jolly good read.

Very. Spurred me to spend the last 2 hours reading through MR's, EG's, OD's, and your posts. Every time I learn something about flutes, it opens the door for two more things that I don't know. The research never ends.