stilllearning's Glasser Build

[warramungas]

I'm not exactly sure on the "correct" measurement but from what I found from the build threads and what I did was, 1mm wide cut every 5mm. I stand to be corrected if I'm wrong but I recon that's the go. Not saying the wider cuts won't work just the narrower may work slightly better, maybe. (Hope someone will help us out here)

The sandpaper should work ok, just make sure the copper is nice and shiny with no dark or green spots, dust or oil etc.

Keep up the good work :handgestures-thumbupleft:

I'm not an engineer but its about surface contact. The more surface contact you have the better the heat transfer turning the vapor into liquid. The smaller the bubbles the better chance it has to condense instead of continue up the column. Like having one massive bubble travelling up or millions of small ones.
The bigger the slots, the bigger the bubbles, the less efficient the plates are.
I thought about using extremely fine stainless mesh under my caps slots to make the vapor 'fizz' but was worried about blocking up my column if it puked and blocked the screen.

[stilllearning]

Hmmm, thanks for your thoughts warramungas...
From what I've read, I'm feeling that narrower slots are the go now. What I was thinking was to finish the plate that I started with the larger slots, then the next plate do smaller slots. I might leave the rest of the plates out of the rig for now, and do my first runs with just the 2 plates and try and see if there is any noticeable difference. I can always make the slots bigger down the track, can't go the other way I suppose.

I'm happy to burn a few runs playing around... I've never done a still run of any kind before so there will be lots to learn when the time comes to fire up.

[stilllearning]

A bit more progress over the long weekend -

Finished the bottom flange/plate section, discovered that the stainless ferrule has been welded on a degree or so out of square to the keg. Leveled the keg using the adjustable feet, then used the spirit level and a file to angle the copper pipe back to compensate before the plate was soldered on. Had to make a mark in the easy flange to make sure that that it is always fitted in exact same spot to the stainless ferrule. Hopefully everything will stand up nice and straight now as it gets taller.

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Decided not to bother with the caps for now, I can get pretty much everything else done while I'm still thinking about them a bit. I'm not having much luck with soldering the caps, so was toying with the idea of doing a screw in / threaded type of thing kind of like the FSD ones. I have a lathe, drill press and tap & die sets so I want to give it a go and see what happens. Back to the drawing board for now.

Assembled the rest of the plates / glass, slotted the holes in all my plates so I can get rods in and out easily (there's one missing at the back where I was sliding in the glass & seals).
Used the dremel with the sanding drum attachement with no sanding drum installed to spin all the nuts on, super fast, I think it took me about 30 minutes to do all of them rough, then an hour or so to get everything perfect with the glass & seals installed.

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Going to try spend some time on my packed section next weekend.

[rumdidlydum]

Top notch work their mate :handgestures-thumbupleft:
Since you have a lathe if you can cut down the thread thats unneeded it makes life so much easier, something to ponder about anyway :teasing-tease:
I see you went for the custom 4inch seals, just be carefull that the they don't get clamped by the nuts otherwise it puts pressure on the glass and pop it's toast. :angry-banghead:
All in all great job, I bet you cant wait to run it :D

[Zipeddy]

I see you went for the custom 4inch seals, just be carefull that the they don't get clamped by the nuts otherwise it puts pressure on the glass and pop it's toast. :angry-banghead:

Found that out the hard way!
Nice one SL. Good lookin boiler :handgestures-thumbupleft:

[stilllearning]

Thanks guys,

I've mentioned it before but I can't take credit for any of the boiler ideas... all ripped from other builds here.

...just be carefull that the they don't get clamped by the nuts otherwise it puts pressure on the glass and pop it's toast. :angry-banghead:

Good to know - luckily no breakages yet... :pray:
The plates were sized so that the washers fix exactly next to the outside diameter of the seals, the idea being that the washers help hold the seal centred without clamping them. I had a couple I had to poke out from under the washers while I was assembling but no big drama's so far.

Bet I can't wait to run it.... mate that's an understatement! I've been playing with this on and off for a couple of years now, so keen as hell! I'm probably about as exited to get boiling as my wife is for me to get all my shit off the verandah :)) :))

[Milky]

Great build, I'm looking very forward to seeing this finished!

[stilllearning]

This weekends progress -

Had a good weekend, no fuckups and still have all my fingers. Finished the last flange/adaptor section on the top of the bubble plates

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Also got the packed section finished, it's 2 primus modules with vented plates at each end to hold everything in. The plate in the middle is completely open, just a big hole to match the diameter of the seal (forgot to grab a photo of it). The plan is to maybe use this also use this as a botanical basket for gins too. What does everyone think, good or bad idea? I'm thinking that the holes blocking on the bottom plate might be a risk. I'll have to come up with a bypass/relief so that even if this happens vapour can keep moving upwards.

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I'm not sure if it has had anything to do with anything, but lately when I clean my copper up (using a wire brush on the drill, or a ceramic flap wheel on the angle grinder) I give it a wipe over with some shellite on a clean rag. I've got oily skin, and I've noticed that I leave fingerprints etched into fresh copper which show up a while after I've touched things. So, if I shellite everything down, it seems to remove any oils etc. and then I try to get a coat of flux on straight away. I'm careful not to touch anything to be soldered after the shellite has been on. I reckon my soldering results have been much better since.
I remember we used to clean certain components with shellite back when I used to do a lot of electronics soldering, and cleaning computer CPU's of their thermal paste when we replaced heatsinks. Does a great job and leaves no residue so I thought I'd try it here.

Progress will stop now for a few weeks, got semester finals coming up for uni, relos visiting from WA and baby's first birthday on the cards in the next couple of weeks. My final job this afternoon was to dismantle my temporary workshop on the verandah and cram everything back into my tiny shed. The wife has gracefully accepted the still for it's ornamental value and allowed it to remain on the verandah for the time being (it's literally too tall now to go anywhere else without being broken down anyway). I'm waiting on a 100mm x 50mm reducer and 100mm coupler to arrive from Tradelink now so not too much more I can do without that anyway (see http://www.aussiedistiller.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=9520)

Thanks for watching, see you all in a couple of weeks for the RC build.

[scythe]

I probably would have waited till you had all the caps installed on the plates before assembling it.
Now you have to break it down again to put them in.

[rumdidlydum]

Thats a brilliant idea for the packed section. It might be a bit short but you will soon find out :-B
Great work :handgestures-thumbupleft:

[stilllearning]

I probably would have waited till you had all the caps installed on the plates before assembling it.
Now you have to break it down again to put them in.

I know, I know - I'm not looking forward to it :handgestures-thumbdown: Hopefully it's not too bad with the slotted holes in the plates. I just couldn't wait to keep going without the caps, honestly my first couple of runs will probably be in pot mode or maybe with just the packed section on anyway.

Thats a brilliant idea for the packed section. It might be a bit short but you will soon find out :-B
Great work :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Can always add another glass, what's another 150mm height....
Was a little tricky to get everything set just right without little dags of steel wool poking out around seals but got there in the end.

I should mention that I doubt I will ever run it in the full 6 plates + packed section, I'll probably cut it down to 5 or even for 4 plates + packed section in reality. I just wanted to assemble it in it's "maximum" form, to make sure it can handle the weight etc. and not tip over or crack glass or whatever. Having never run a still before I'll bet there will be lots of re-configs before I find my groove.

[stilllearning]

Had an electrician mate around yesterday to fix a few things around the house, got my elements wired up while he was here.

Just got the condensers and the caps to make now... getting closer...

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[Doubleuj]

Love that packed section mate.

[maddogpearse]

Love that packed section mate.

:text-+1:

[stilllearning]

After a few weeks break from the build, finally found some time today to get cracking on my RC.

The original design had 6x 3/4" pipes through a 125mm RC, I've been watching some amazing things happen with RC's around here lately and I've been inspired to go for 19x 1/2" pipes instead. I'm also doing a mid-way "baffle" plate, my cooling lines are both attaching on the same side so I wanted to maximise the time the water takes to get around the RC. I've drilled 4x 5mm holes in the baffle on the opposite side to where the water connecitons will be to let water through.
Invested in a MAPP torch with auto-ignition, man what a good investment.

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Made up the three plates, lathed them round and drilled out to 13mm (started with 5mm bit and went up about 2mm steps) as a sandwich. I put a punch mark on each plate again so I can tell which way is up and which way around they were drilled so they align perfectly again later on.

Soldered on the bottom plate, I'm not doing an easy-flange on either end as I've just over sized the end plates so they form the end plate and flange in one hit. Dry fitted everything together ready for a big day of soldering tomorrow.

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Any suggestions on cleaning all my vapor tubes before soldering? I've heard citrus baths and things thrown around before but I'm not sure how to go about it. Normally I just shine everything up with a flap disc on my angle grinder but 19 tubes which need to be cleaned on the ends and in the middle for the baffle plate is going to be a struggle. Can I do some sort of chemical clean to make life easy? I'm also not a fan of getting my fingers so close to the grinder disc...

Anyway, all going well tomorrow I'll have this thing sorted.

[woodduck]

I would just use sandpaper rolled up around the end of your tube and twist a few times, jobs done :handgestures-thumbupleft:

I don't want to get too far off topic here or knock anyone's ideas because experimenting and new tech is great, I'm just curious, are these rc's with large amounts of tubes worth the effort? Sure they will hold back massive amounts of power but how much power are we using? My little 80mm long, 5x3/4" tubed rc can hold full reflux at about 2700w or drip a few drips a second (for taking fores) at 3000w. Are they very responsive? I only have 5 tubes and mine takes at least a minute to respond to any adjustment.

[stilllearning]

Thanks woodduck, I think sandpaper might be the way to go. I might even throw each one on the lathe for a few seconds and sand them at slow speed just to be sure. I want everything 100% clean before I attempt to solder.

No real reason for the higher number of small tubes, I liked the look of captainredbeard's 4" PC is all.
I figured a higher efficiency RC would need less water in total over the course of the run, I'm planning on using tap water, and with fairly severe water restrictions in Townsville if I can hold full reflux with only a trickle of water then I guess that's a good thing. Hopefully it's not too efficient and I have trouble adjusting flow rate when collecting, but even then I guess I could plug up some vapor tubes down the track if I need to dial it back a bit.
Full power will be 4800w but I'll probably be collecting at far less power.

[scythe]

How do you intend to fix the baffle plate in position?
To stop it rising and falling with water flow.
Just soldered to the side wall?
Have the top plate on when you do so or it might end up a little off to one side and then the top plate may not fit.

[stilllearning]

Yep, just going to put a few bits of solder around the plate and heat from the outside, similar to Mac's shotty method. Good idea, I'll just dry fit the end plate while I'm soldering the baffle in to make sure it fits easily later on.

[stilllearning]

Well the copper gods must have been smiling on me today...
Managed to get the whole RC done except for the cooling line fittings, everything went smoothly, no hiccups and 100% watertight. :dance:

Threw each piece of pipe in the lathe at slow speed and sanded the ends and middle out and wiped with shellite. Took all of about 20 minutes to clean them all up.

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Dry assembled everything to make sure of fit, soldered up all the vapour tubes at one end (the end plate itself was soldered on yesterday).

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Flipped over, removed the other loose end plate, and started on the baffle plate. Hammered it gently down to the middle with a spare bit of copper pipe, then carefully poured in little amounts of bakers flux to make sure everything had a coating on it. Then I went nuts using the "Mac shotty" method of cutting up little pellets of solder and dropping them down everywhere. Poked them around with a scribe so they were fairly evenly spread, then heated everything up as evenly as I could to get solder flowing around.

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Pretty much everything sealed up, I had to feed in a little more solder here and there to get things moving, but all in all worked pretty well. Some of the fit against the side wall was pretty sloppy (seems my 4" has come off round a bit, the plate was lathed so I know it is round) so I lost a little solder down the sides and the seal wasn't quite perfect all the way around. Doesn't matter, it's sealed about 95% in total around the side and around the vaopor tubes so she'll work just fine. I forgot to get a picture of the baffle plate soldered in.

Fitted the other end plate, hammered down gently till it was hard against the 4", then soldered in all the vapour tubes. Let air cool till the solder hardened, then flipped again so I could do the final soldering between the end plate and the body.

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By this stage the heat coming off this thing was immense, I pretty much did all the soldering with the space of around 40 minutes. Normally I let parts air cool for a few minutes then dunk them in water - wasn't game this time, there was so much heat stored up in this thing I was scared that sudden cooling would crack or warp something so I left it to air cool in the sink for a couple of hours. Leak tested, all good. Hacksawed the excess vapour tubes off, I left a little overhang just in case things go pear shaped when I solder on my water fittings, when that is done I'll flapwheel the whole lot flush.

Very happy with my results for the day. Another big thankyou to all the blokes that have gone before me - I reckon reading all those build logs and seeing the success and failures of other soldering jobs prepared me well for this one. I reckon it will be pretty smooth sailing from here on now that I've got a little soldering confidence up. :handgestures-thumbupleft:

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