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Any interest in an electric/manual destemmer?

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Michibacy

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I have been fooling around with the design for a few years now and am finally at the point of putting a design together. I am going to make one for myself, but may offer one for sale if anyone is interested.

Your thoughts/questions/comments are appreciated.

Jeremy
 

Michibacy

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I'll keep you informed as to how they work in that case then.

I will try my best at keeping cost low but still keep it somewhat high quality. I've got a few shops I can get the electric motors in.
I've looked over a few designs, some from the early 1800's and some from the 1980's, both incorporate a "leaf grabbing" action via 2 different sets of wheels, the first set is set at X RPM while the send set is set at say X+1000RPM, thus grabbing the lamina and peeling it away from the vein. I can see good use for that in cigarettes where the condition of the lamina isn't a huge priority, but with a cigar as you know the lamina is almost the pride and joy of the leaf.

My set up will use EPDM rubber guide wheels (won't dry out when exposed to air such as rubber wheels on a car when they get dry rotted), a razor guide that slices the lamina alongside the vein, and either an adjustable vein-width guide or (if my design works that I have in front of me) an "automatic" vein width guide that travels a few millimeters in front of the razor guide and moves the razor guide to the width of the upcoming vein.

Obviously, the electric will cost more, electric motors (that aren't cheapo China ones) are sitting pretty high on the price market right now, even when bought in quantity. (a motor such as the one on a powermatic is probably within the top 5 costs of the machine).

The manual one will be slower but will have a hand crank similar to manual shredders.

Sorry, no fancy stainless steel in this design's future...
 

DGBAMA

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will be very interested to see what you come up with.

How about one that can sit directly over the top of a powermatic shredder, so that the destemmed leaf is fed directly into the next step?
 

Michibacy

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That would actually be quite a bit easier to build as gravity will force the leaf down. Can anyone grab me dimensions on a power matic?
 

Michibacy

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I'll see what I can come up with. The biggest hurdle is making the adjustable guide. I am sourcing out some really cool and sharp cutters right now, some are made with the same sharpness as medical scalpels.

The only issue with my current design is you won't end up with a frog legged leaf, it will complete separate each leaf into lamina part a - stem - lamina part be. It "should" leave each leaf lamina in full condition. As a FYI/reminder this won't be a threshing machine, it won't remove the smaller veins throughout the lamina.
 

Michibacy

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Been pricing out the parts, the electric would be easily twice the cost of a manual. It will be a 110/120volt.

All of the parts I've found and priced are MADE in the USA which is a big factor in my pricing.

I'm working on getting a rough line drawing of what it would look like right now.

I will have to make some metal guards for the machine, do you folks think aluminum or painted steel?
 

Michibacy

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I am posting this here trusting no one steals my design for profit.

A very rough idea of what the stand alone unit will look like. I will need to get my hands on a schematic drawing of a Powermatic so I can make a mount to mount the destemmer 90* CW to feed into the shredder, and a flow trough to shoot the stems away from the shredder.

destemmer.png

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bonehead

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if you are thinking of integration don't forget we don't know the dimensions of the new powermatic. it would be sad to make something for an obsolete machine. another change is another thousand or way more, or way,way more than more.
 

Michibacy

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Indeed. Right now it would just be a stand alone unit, It'd be quite a dumb idea to build it for a soon-to-be obsolete product.
 

Michibacy

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Running into design issues with the manual version. The electric version will have very fine tooth blades (we're talking about 100 tooth per .5") that will spin around 1000RPM essentially acting like a table saw on the leaf.

The problem with the manual version is without a gear or belt/pulley the blade won't spin nearly that fast, I may be able to make manual handle that obviously is much larger than the diameter of the shaft that makes it spin fast that *may* make it cut faster.

Another design question:

Would you guys want this to be manually fed through the machine, or just slide the leaf through one side (as a complete leaf) and push/pull it through? (again, a lot like a table saw)
 
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