Inside some apple mills
Here's a quick run down of the internals of some mills.
Hand-cranked mill
Hand-cranked (or small motor driven) mill being fed. Note apples are pre-cut.
Here you can see at the bottom a couple of serrated metal rollers
which contra-rotate inwards. On the top are some fixed slicing plates
and above that a rotating shaft with knives, to help cut the apples
small before they enter the crushing rollers.
Trumpet Mill
This is the mill in two parts with the trumpet cover removed.
Here's a close up of the blade arrangement (direct shaft drive by the
motor underneath). There is a double ended blade mounted on the top of
the shaft. Below that are two pushers/ hammers. The fixed plate on the
left is a baffle to minimise apples and pulp building up behind the
screen (next picture) and jamming the knives. Rotation is
anti-clockwise.
Here are the internals fully assembled with the perforated screen in
place. The pulp exits the screen towards the viewer and falls down the
chute. As with most hammer mills, the pulp size is much smaller than
the holes in the plate would imply, because particles have to fly out
through the holes. They may get chopped / hammered in the chamber
several times before they are small enough to find a way out.
Voran (Kranzl) Mill
Here's the Voran mill and press driven from a common belt drive (mill to right).
Mill with hopper removed.
Closer up. The wooden pushers to the left can be clearly seen. These
work alternately from the driven green bar to prevent apples jamming.
The grater is a rotating wooden roller fitted with stainless steel
blades.
Closer still.
This clearly shows the small gap between the stainless baseplate
and the rotating knives, through which the pulp falls into a hopper
below. I think this particular design may be obsolete and no
longer manufactured by Voran.
Speidel Mill
Here's the Speidel Mill in glorious coloured polypropylene!
Here's the mill with apples going in and pulp coming out.
Here's the internal rotating knife / pusher arrangement of the Speidel
Mill. The motor is sealed within the black polypropylene housing.
© Andrew Lea 2009