Tuesday 21 June 2016

Mechanical benchtop flour sieve

Over the past few weeks we have been working on a machine to take some of the backbreaking effort out of hand sieving our flour.  We always sieve the meal because we haven't yet managed to prevent whole grains from ricocheting across the top of the stone and ending up in the product.  Up to now the flour bagger has had to shake a circular stainless steel sieve by hand, OK for small quantities but desperately hard work when there is 30kg to process.

The mechanical sieve consists of two wooden boxes, the inner one holding a sheet of perforated stainless steel mesh, agitated by a cam one side of the outer box and returned by sprung pushers the other side.  We can turn it by hand, but also by using a variable speed power drill

Today it finally became possible to try it out and, while it still needs some improvement, we were very pleased with the result - cue film....


2 comments:

  1. I have come across two methods of preventing whole grains from 'escaping' across the top of the Runner. One was a metal 'funnel' loosely fitted in the eye of the stone, the other, which I used is a leather 'sock' attached to a ring on the shoe, the damsel passes through it. Having said that we still experience the same problem and sift for the same reason!

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    1. We already have a plastic tube (actually an old whitewash bucket with the bottom cut out) wedged in the eye of the stone. We tried a fabric sock as well, but it got very dusty and made a breeding ground for mill moths

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