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Lefty11 |
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Coaldale, Alberta, Canada | Was wondering if anyone has any advice on on farm grain cleaning equipment. Would be used on edible beans, buckwheat, barley, wheat. Preferably one machine, small scale (under 15,000 bushels/yr). All certified organic. Would like to clean own seed as well as clean for market. Could I get away w/ a wind and screen only, would we need a gravity table?, etc. TIA for the input, H | ||
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| Rkd843 |
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SC Sask | It would be very difficult to do everything you are looking for with only one machine. First of all being an organic farmer and cleaning your own seed, I would want that as clean as possible which means at the very least a wind and screen and a gravity, I would not want to re-seed those light little weed seeds. Also if you are doing edible beans you may want a de-stoner especially if you are cleaning for market. We clean for a soup company, and they only allow 2 stones per ton, we have to be very careful with our machines to get to that level even with a de-stoner. More and more companies are looking for food quality cleanliness straight from the first line cleaner, we used to have to hit 99% for anything we export now we get asked regularily to hit 99.99% which is a heck of a lot harder to hit. I am not trying to rain on your parade, eveyone likes to set up their own operation that they have control over. Using only one machine can be done, but it will take multiple passes, and you will have to be very diligent with your samples/machine adjustments. The downside of multiple passes, is that every time you run your grain through the machine you will lose some good stuff along with the bad stuff you are trying to take out. Also you run the chance of further damaging they good stuff that you are trying to sell (I am sure your edible beans don't like to be handled too much). If you want to set up a mill there must be lots of older retirement age type guys around your area that have mills already set up that they might be willing to part with. I know of at least 2 around here that are no longer used. Last point, we found this from experience, if you go through all of the work setting up a sweet little mill for yourself, you may start doing a few odd jobs for a neighbor here and there... pretty soon you will not have time to run your own stuff through your own mill. We are now going through our 4th expansion, and I am still not sure if we are big enough yet. | ||
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| Lefty11 |
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Coaldale, Alberta, Canada | thanks, that was the kind of feedback I was looking for. Could you contact me about the two mills that are no longer used, or get me any info on them? It looks like you are not to far from me. My email is in profile, thanks, H | ||
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| Jon Hagen |
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 Hagen Brothers farms,Goodrich ND | About the same deal here, we clean our own wheat , flax ,field pea seed and are set up to do human food grade cleaning for the health food market.. One mill cant do what you want. Our first stage is a clipper 47B air screen cleaner with aspirators before and after the screen mill. I like the Clipper screen mill because of the precise screw adjusters on the two aspirator systems. Turning those fine thread screw adjusters make for very precise adjustment of air flow.often times as fine as 1/4 turn on those fine thread screws. precision many other brand mills do not have especially important on light seeds like flax. Add to that Clipper is very good about supplying parts for their machines, even ones up to 100 years old. When doing flax, the second stage is a Carter day twin row flax finisher, followed by a Forsberg V50 vacuum gravity table. We run these rigs at only at 15 BPH so they can do a really good cleaning job. We have the auger and conveyor systems set up so we can use any or all of the three cleaners in series. The gravity table is the tool to get rid of light diseased or "runt", light empty seeds, and weed seeds to produce a really nice clean product. The gravity table will seperate stuff only a pound or two per bushel lighter than the good plump, healthy seeds, something you cant do with a screen or disc cleaner. You dont need any diseased seeds or weeds in your organic seed or grain you sell. We worked hard to produce a superior product, something that can set on a store shelf in a gallon clear plastic bottle and have it look really good, no "zits" in that golden Omega flax. Kind of made all the effort worthwhile , when the health inspector told us that ours was the cleanest product of all the area food grade cleaners. If your working indoors, I would not consider a pressure gravity table over a vacuum gravity table because they are so much cleaner, no chaff or dust blown into the air where your working. One advantage is the smaller stuff, it is priced cheap and fits in less space. Our cleaner setup, including 3 cleaners and a couple of 70 BU holding bins, fits inside a retired 50 ft "reefer" trailer. Cheap, clean drip and vermin free, with inspector friendly aluminum floor and slick plastic covered walls and ceiling. Edited by Jon Hagen 3/19/2012 18:21 | ||
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| Lefty11 |
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Coaldale, Alberta, Canada | Thats interesting, Jon. I was wondering exactly that, if a guy could put all this in an old dry van or reefer trailer. I thought it might be a bit skinny. Are all the machines on one side? Is the clipper 47B better/worse/different than the clipper eclipse? Thanks for the info, H | ||
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| Jon Hagen |
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Hagen Brothers farms,Goodrich ND | The Clipper 47D is mounted at the left rear of the reefer, leaving about a 3 ft alley on the right. The air discharge duct and tailings elevator for the Clipper exits the right trailer wall high overhead and drops into a "screenings" gravity wagon parked at the right rear of the reefer. The Carter Day disc cleaner is 3 ft forward of the clipper and on the right. A bit further forward and on the left is the "dirty" grain bin that feeds the Clipper through a 4 inch (plastic flyting) auger with a double reduction jackshaft so it runs very slow (15BPH). A few more ft forward again and on the right is the "clean " storage bin that holds clean grain from the Clipper air screen cleaner, delivered by a very low speed "flex auger" (again 15BPH). At the right front of the trailer is the Forsberg V50 gravity table Fed by a rigid double reduction 4 inch auger from the "clean" bin, or fed by a flex auger from the Carter Day disc cleaner which is also fed by 4 inch auger from the "clean" bin. The clean output from the gravity table goes into another low speed 4 inch rigid auger that exits the left front of the reefer and dumps into a tote bag or grain truck. In the right front of the reefer we mounted a large centrifigual blower using outside air to pressurize the trailer and blow any dust out the open rear doors. It fits well enough that there is plenty of room to move around in there, plus storage for many sets of cleaner screens and other supplies. The vacuum gravity table pulls screened air from a large hole in the floor under the gravity table and exhausts it to the 7 hp blower mounted outside on the upper front center of the reefer trailer. It is less complicated and works better than it sounds, but you are pretty busy fine tuning all three cleaners to constantly to compensate for small changes in grain weight, moisture and temperature. http://www.atferrell.com/clipper/products/clipper-eclipse-324. The Eclipse 324 or 334 appears to be amuch newer machine with 3 screens where the 47D has only 2. It does not appear to have the second (pre screen) aspirator, but that is something that may be an option on the 324. I would trust Clipper to supply parts / service for it as long as you might want to use it, good machines. By the listed screen size, I would bet it has quality and quantity equal or better than the 47D. I do like the 47D's varnished hardwood frame better though. Eye candy, it's a 64 model. ;-) Edited by Jon Hagen 3/19/2012 22:02 | ||
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| Rawleigh |
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White Stone, Virginia | Get a reefer with a Thermoking and you will have air conditioning! | ||
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