Years ago I was given a lot of apples to change into wine. This presented me with a problem. Apples contain juice but how do you get it?
The answer seemed to be the fruit juicer we had. I started juicing the fruit rather optimistic but that changed rather quick. After only a few kilos the machine was smelling of burning electronics. It did not go very well. I became a little frustrated because a mountain of unprocessed apples was looking at me.
About 15 minutes later my little frustration had turned into a mild rage. I decided that one of us was not surviving this day. So I burnt the puny, sad, incompetent machine. “I love the smell of napalm in the morning” was a phrase that came to mind. My lust for destruction was satisfied and the rest of my aggression was ventilated on the poor apples. The apples won and I never made wine from apples again.
This kind of equipment is not really meant to be used for amounts that are required by home wine makers. I decided to keep the broken juicer because in the back of my mind I thought that I could use the parts some day. And finally I did!
It took forever. It was very difficult. And now it is very dangerous! I could give you the advice not to do this at home because all the safeties that were built in this equipment were removed and it was provided with AWESOME, TERRIFYING, POWER!
What you see here is a vacuum cleaner motor mounted on a piece of wood. It is controlled by a adjustable potentiometer and a component that is meant to control speed and power of motors. Don’t ask me how it works because I have no idea. I just connected it. I left the ventilator on the axis so it could cool the motor and would also provide some load. Otherwise the motor would be completely out of control.
It also took forever to make the motor fit in the housing. The diameter of the motor is at least double and it is also taller. But after a lot of cutting it fits.
Then there was the biggest problem. Connecting the motor to the rotating bit of the juicer. It was very difficult to center the part in exactly the right position. At this stage I almost gave up even though I was so close. There is no point in going into the details because you will not have the same parts as me but after a lot of desperate hours I managed to fix it in a “reasonable way”. Reasonable means actually that it is not very accurate and that there is some vibration at certain high rpm’s.
Today is a glorious day. Ha Ha Ha! Today I managed to make juice out of 3 kg apples. It gave me +/- 2 litres of juice which I think is very acceptable. It is working. I feel a little like Dr. Frankenstein because the parts were lying dead in a box for years and I gave life to a juicer.
In fact the new motor has so much power that I can safely say: I created a monster!”
It may look rather innocent but I am sure that it can also make juice out of a tree, or play the lead role in a very cheap horror movie.
Hans
