Has anyone used the NETZSCH chocolate machines?
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Tech Help, Tips, Tricks, & Techniques
This is an edited version of Brad's response to his own reply.Apparently Clay has had some pushback from my incendiary posts above. He's asked me to delete my posts, and I've agreed. However I don't readily know how to do that. Instead, now that I've openly slapped a company I think is ripping people off, I'm going to substantiate my claims, and help those of you who are looking for a winnowing solution for your business:CRACKINGYou can buy a good quality cracker from Commodity Processing Ltd in the UK for about $3500 USD, which allows you to completely control the size of your cracked product. One of these units will easily do 100lbs per hour all day, every day without fail. It's a product I use in our shop. (Don't buy their fanning device. I did. It's a POS)John Nanci on Chocolate alchemy also sells a hand unit that you can attach to an electric drill for about a hundred bucks. I started with this, and it works ok, until you get into more industrial long term use. It would be a good start for an artisan.You can then have the nibs fall from the cracker directly into the rotating screen (described below).WINNOWINGWinnowing is about airflow and particle separation. Airflow can be created by both suction and/or blowing. The challenge with cracked cocoa is the disparate sizes of the beans and shell, so the first thing that needs to happen is that the particle size needs to be made uniform.Traditionally screening cocoa is done using a series of vibrating flat screens. The problem with flat screens is that eventually, they clog up with nibs and need to be cleared out by an operator. They are also very very noisy. A better solution (one that I've designed) is a cylindrical screen that the nibs, once cracked, tumble into. The screen is tilted 10 degrees and slowly tumbles the nibs and shell, causing the large pieces and large shell to tumble out the end, and the smaller pieces to fall through. The benefit to this design is that it's not noisy, and the large pieces that get caught in the screen fall out once the screen rotates to where the nib is at the inside top. This design also requires only a small servo motor and a belt to keep the screen turning. Nibs and shell that fall out the end, can continue to be run through the cracker to create more uniform pieces, until such time as product falls out the "reject" end of the rolling screen. Screen size should be no larger than 3/8 ths of an inch.ONCE THE NIBS AND SHELL HAVE GONE THROUGH THIS PROCESS, YOU HAVE A UNIFORM MAXIMUM SIZE PRODUCT, AND LOTS OF OTHER SMALL SIZES.DUST COLLECTIONA single cyclone dust collector with a particle bag, and heppa filter can be purchased from any large woodworking supply company for just a few hundred dollars. I purchased mine at Busy Bee Tools here in Calgary for $269. It creates the CFM draw I need, doesn't use a whack of electricity, and plugs into any standard North American wall outlet.3. Blowing: You can purchase a series of enclosed fans from any commercial fan and motor supply store for a couple hundred bucks each. the fans you need put out about 300CFM each, and allow a cervo control to be attached (like a dimmer knob on a light) so that you can control the fan speed as it's blowing.4. Winnower design: Create a box (plywood works) about 4 feet tall, and 1 foot by 1 foot wide, with slopes inside. On one side of the box, cut holes and mount your fans. On the other side of the box cut a slot and mount one of your dust collecor input hoses. The top of the box is open, and is where you dump the nibs. As the nibs fall into the opening, they are directed by the slopes you add to the inside of the box, INTO the airflow of the fan at a 45 degree angle. The fan blows the shell through the nibs, and UP another slope into the airflow of the dust collector. You have three fans mounted on this box, so the nibs pass through the airflow three times, then fall out the bottom of the box and into a bin, ready for use.Not only is this a system that can be designed and built for less than a thousand bucks, it's scaleable, so that as your business grows, you can build more boxes, with more fans, and just increase the size of your dust collector.[ this paragraph removed because of offensive language ]
