Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

Currently getting the components together for a bubbler..... still a long ways off as I'm a tightarse.

Anyway been thinking about bubble plates/caps. Tossing up whether to go with a single 2 inch bubble cap or multiple smaller ones. Or as shown below

Not the best drawing I know. Sketchup and me are not friends.
Bubbles come out of exterior ring then downcomer is in the middle.

The theory is it would give a more even bubble action and not leave as many "dead spots" as with caps. I'd have to put a plate or something on the bottom of the downcomer to direct the flow towards the outside too to stop it just falling straight down the next one.

I know caps would be a lot easier to make but any other advantages?

4 inch bubbler btw so there's not a lot of room.

Interesting idea :handgestures-thumbupleft:

What's your plan for a riser?

I run single 2" caps and get plenty of action on the plate :handgestures-thumbupleft:

By all means try and reinvent the wheel,but I would suggest ya go with a known quantity befor ya spend a lot of time and money on development of something that may not work all that well,not something most tight asses would consider,if the objective is to reduce dead spots ,I see a big one in the center area ,and on watching either my 2inch caps or 1inch ones I do not see dead areas at all ,I respect your idear and would be very interested ta see ifn how it would work.cheers hillzabilly ;-)

My next build will be semi-modular with central single caps and dual external downcomers. Should keep me properly frustrated for a while, but it'll look cool!

Having read lots of different attempts at new plate desire it always comes back to 2 types perforated and caps. There's got to be a reason, that said I don't see any reason it wouldn't work and look forward to seeing it progress if you choose to.

hillzabilly wrote:By all means try and reinvent the wheel,but I would suggest ya go with a known quantity befor ya spend a lot of time and money on development of something that may not work all that well,not something most tight asses would consider,if the objective is to reduce dead spots ,I see a big one in the center area ,and on watching either my 2inch caps or 1inch ones I do not see dead areas at all ,I respect your idear and would be very interested ta see ifn how it would work.cheers hillzabilly ;-)

:D

Tightarse is looking at the scrap bin at work looking at all the 316 we throw out and thinking how I can use it. Conventional bubble caps would actually cost me money. As for time, I like making stuff.

Its not just "dead spots" Flow from the edges to the centre just seems more elegant + plus I could put heaps of risers in the outside ring reducing constriction where it's not wanted.

Think I'll just make a few different designs and see how they work

All good do not forget what they told columbus about the world being flat,he proved them all wrong,your idear has merit and I Iook forward ta seeing what ya can come up with,I love building stuff too and hate seeing scrap bins with good stuff going ta waste,carry on with your idear,I have found sometimes designing stuff is much easier than figuring out how to actually build it .But if ya know what standared plates can do then you will have something to compare results with from your donut plates.cheers hillzabilly :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Whole ring would be the riser but rather than a hole half way up consider notchs all round the bottom. Be fiddly little things to make but i reakon they would work. :handgestures-thumbupleft:

On second thought dont reakon they would even be that fiddly.

bluc wrote:Whole ring would be the riser but rather than a hole half way up consider notchs all round the bottom. Be fiddly little things to make but i reakon they would work. :handgestures-thumbupleft:

On second thought dont reakon they would even be that fiddly.

The holes in the middle are my dodgy drawing skills. Circles and sketchup and an incompetent don't get along too well. :angry-banghead:

I was actually considering using an NC turret to put heaps of little holes around the bottom, but stainless and little punches are annoying x_x so slots like a normal cap would be good.

What about liquid bubbling over the ring/cap and getting trapped?

No reason this wouldn't work. It's the same as a bubble cap, but it bubbles from the inside not the outside. And that has a lot of bubbly surface area! Much more than one 2" cap, which is about the max most people can fit with a dc in 4".
This is good. I like this. Please build it!!
It also gives a lot more volume to your riser which is a huge bottle neck on my bubbler and frustrates the piss out of me when I'm trying to strip with it!!!

For the downcomer gas on's spider / Sputnik idea might work:

viewtopic.php?f=36&t=1809&hilit=downcomer+spider#p24237

The second picture, close to the bottom on the first page.

ive searched through all the completed builds but cant find any detail for constructing a 4'' complete bubble cap plate can anyone point me in the right direction or section please

Could you not just scale up a single 2inch cap plate ,5star has the 2inch caps pretty darn cheap,I think ya will struggle ta make them for that price,plus a set of downcomers to match ,would get ya started.I use a set of 4 of them for rum and whiskey and anything that I want maximum flavour to carry over,then gave the downcomers a little tweek http://aussiedistiller.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=7402 for a deaper bath and am very happy with their performance.For neutral I found the multiple 1inch caps gave a better purity tho and use those for that purpose .cheers hillzabilly :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Is it better to have one cap or more smaller ones?

Yep u convinced me just sent five star an enquiry

That top picture is speccy but it wouldn't need a downcomer pipe in the middle. Just a hole as anything that makes it over the top can go downwards. Its like one of those caps with the downcomer in the middle just on a larger scale.
I built something similar for my 2" column.

warramungas wrote:That top picture is speccy but it wouldn't need a downcomer pipe in the middle. Just a hole as anything that makes it over the top can go downwards. Its like one of those caps with the downcomer in the middle just on a larger scale.
I built something similar for my 2" column.

You'd still need a downcomer to act as a vapour lock :-B

If I was to make bubble caps is there a specific copper to use cuz the cap I was going to get is called wrot copper who would have thought there were different types of copper