Winnower query

All of the winnowers out there seem to be either very expensive (for a relatively small producer) or a homemade series of tubes and a shop-vac. Even John Nancy's Aether (and I am a fan of his) is a bit costly for a series of pvc pipes, poly-carbonate, and aluminum. I'm wondering if anyone might have drawn out plans for a winnower that they have created that I can use to build my own? I would, of course, be willing to pay for these plans (providing they are a proven design, are written clearly and can winnow, EFFECTIVELY, 50-75 lbs an hour).

Thanks!

David

Dave -

One of the most-liked small winnowers is the one from RealSeeds in the UK:

http://www.realseeds.co.uk/seedcleaner.html

One trick to throughput on this is to be able to feed it continuously with some sort of feeder. I might also look to consider multiple passes or perhaps pre-classify.

You should also consider making this with food-safe material such as HDPE - at least for the food contact parts.

I would be careful with making too extensive modifications to the dimensions.

There are several plans out there online, including the realseeds one Clay linked. If you search/dig on this site, I'm sure you'll find some of them. If you like John Nanci's winnower, he has plans on his site if you want to build it yourself:

http://chocolatealchemy.com/blog/2011/07/11/chocolate-alchemys-diy-winnower 

Thanks, Clay and Ben, for the responses. I'm feeling a couple of late nights down in the basement with some pvc and a drill are in my future. It's all quite achievable, though.

It's really like the "Wild West of the Winnowers" out there, isn't it?!

I'm also intrigued by the Kudvic design... and it seems rather possible to recreate from the video (though exact measurements would have to be figured out):

Cocoa bean cracker and winnower Cocoa breaker, Cocoa bean crusher and separator Kudvic

Any thoughts about (or experience with) this design?

David

The hotel pans give a clue to the dimensions.

In my experience, you will spend a lot of time working on duplicating the Kudvic rig. There is a lot going on here and the geometry and physics are complex. Also - a lot depends on the cracker you're using.

IMO - you'd be better off starting with the Real Seeds winnower and working to modify it. I would not use a single piece of plexi on the front. I'd have separate pieces for the zig zag chamber and the collection chambers. This will enable you to access the zig zag chamber easily and experiment with shapes and distances and more to improve and focus the turbulence which is what you need to separate things properly.