Hi All,
I finally got around to building my vibrator/shaker which is a copy of Dan Cox’s unit and I hope it works as well.
I had a little problem with the pics, but basically they’re a step by step, build a piece, dry fit it, build another piece. I love those construction magnets for sticking parts together.
I must add that my second run on 10-19 -13 above ended with a huge bridge (found after I shut down). Temps went up, I thought good, but 3 or 4 minutes later, engine sputtered a few times and died…huh?? Ah, more of the 75% learning curve kicking in. Banging the hopper with a big hammer to no avail. My gas wouldn’t flare. What the “fill in the blank”! I did have some larger pieces in this run so another % of learning… size is important for good fuel flow. I found the bridging after I shut down and started to empty the hopper. All of a sudden the bridge collapsed. It was about a 10" - 12" hole! The temp increase was caused by increased combustion without pyrolizing any new wood. Of course the combustion added more water vapor and CO2 to the mix and the engine shut down.
That really spurred me on to get the vibrator going. I’ll sort my chunks and chop up the larger diam ones.
2 1/2" length and diam seems to be the right size for my hearth. I have several "ledges inside my hopper from putting pieces of tank together so avoid this if you can. If you ain’t burning, you ain’t learning. For some great in depth explanations of all this, check out Jim Mason’s All Power Lab on youtube
http://youtu.be/qlq3_CCVniU. It’s long but the explanations are eye opening. Don’t skip ahead, this is where I heard the nugget about bridging and what really is happening energy wise and chemically at that point!
Can’t wait to try the vibrator.
Pepe
