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He Made His Own Mini Roller Mill
“I recently built a small roller mill that lets me grind my own organic feed fast. I use it on corn, oats and soybeans and unload the ground feed into 5-gal. buckets, which I feed to my goats and chickens,” says Thomas Corbin, Winfield, Penn.
    “The mill is bolted onto an angle iron frame and powered by a 1/2 hp. electric motor, which belt-drives a pair of rollers made from the armatures off junked car starters. The armatures measure 5 1/2 in. long by 3 in. dia. and are mounted on pillow block bearings. A cut-out wooden board is bolted to each end of the hopper to contain the grain.
    “To make the rollers, I removed the commutator bar and winding coil from each armature, keeping the shaft. Then I used a cut-off wheel with a die grinder to deepen the slots between the armature’s stack teeth so they do a better job of grinding. Once the feed has been ground, I dump it in an old cement mixer, add molasses, and mix the feed again. Then I carry it in 5-gal. buckets to my animals.
    “The hopper measures 16 by 20. in. and was built by riveting pieces of sheet metal from an old washing machine. The hopper can hold almost a 5-gal. bucket of grain weighing 25 lbs., and four 5-gal. buckets is enough to feed my animals for a week.
    “It takes only about 15 min. to grind 50 lbs. of feed whereas it took an hour with my old electric-powered burr mill, which was much smaller than this one. My total cost to build the roller mill was a little over $100.
    “I’ve found that buying organic ingredients and making my own organic feed costs only about half as much as what I’d have to pay at a farm store.”
    Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Thomas Corbin, 403 Kratzerville Rd., Winfield, Penn. 17889


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2018 - Volume #42, Issue #2