Vegetable debris by type of agricultural waste, leaves and sawdust is an excellent fuel. However, if you want to use all this in conjunction with a conventional boiler, then you should first prepare pressed briquettes. If the fuel does not have a certain shape, then it will need to be thrown every 5 minutes, and most of it will fall through the grate.
Buy or make
A briquette press can be purchased at the appropriate equipment store, but such a device is quite expensive. In addition, such an acquisition will become profitable only if you plan to organize continuous production. If you own a country house or private housing in the city, then such a device can be built independently.
Press Recommendations
The purchase of factory equipment for forming briquettes will cost from 300 thousand to 1 million rubles, the price will depend on the capacity of the unit. For a private consumer who only needs to use fuel briquettes from time to time , such equipment will not be affordable. It is much easier to make a press from improvised materials, especially since there is nothing complicated in this design.
Some craftsmen use ready-made mechanisms, while others assemble the device from scratch. If you decide to use the latest solution, then the briquette press can be made from a lever and a screw mechanism. You can act on the lever with your own weight. This design is made of wood, but for a screw solution you will need a lathe and steel billets. A screw extruder can be performed independently, but such an undertaking is expensive, because a special high-quality steel will be used in the work.
Using a ready-made mechanism
A briquette press can also be made on the basis of a ready-made mechanism. To do this, you can use a hydraulic press or a jack. The wizard will only have to supplement this node with a matrix and a punch. Any home-made device for pressing sawdust is not able to provide the release of lignin. In exchange, you will have to add third-party binders. To do this, fit:
- cheap wallpaper glue;
- wet paper;
- clay.
Clay should be added in a volume of 1 part to 10 parts of sawdust. If we are talking about sodden paper, then for this we use corrugated cardboard, which contains lignin.
Methodology
If you decide to make a briquette press on the basis of a screw and lever mechanism, know: there is no need to use purchased units. However, they will not have a high compressive force. That is why the press can be created on the basis of a hydraulic jack, equipped with an electric motor or manual drive.
A punch is attached to the hydraulic installation, the dimensions of which must correspond to the dimensions of the matrix, and it is in it that they will be formed into briquettes. The matrix can be made from a thick-walled pipe, which will be the easiest option. In order to allow moisture and air to escape, holes must be made in the walls of the pipe. The matrix must have a removable bottom. If you remove it, then the finished briquette can be pushed into the tray with a punch. The finished mechanism should be supplemented with two handles that provide ease of transportation.
Preparation of materials
Do-it-yourself briquette press can be made of steel sheet and corner. The corner should be equal to the side with a side of 100 mm. The steel sheet should have a thickness of 3 to 6 mm, a punch is to be cut from it. The diameter of the matrix determines the thickness of the workpiece. From this sheet, it is necessary to make a removable bottom.
Preparation of the main nodes
Do-it-yourself briquetting press can be made from pipes and galvanized steel. The pipe should have a diameter ranging from 25 to 30 mm, cut the stem of the punch from it. The blank for the matrix should be made of a thick-walled pipe, the diameter of which will depend on what size briquettes should have.
If the briquettes turn out thin, then their density will increase, and the productivity of the machine, on the contrary, will decrease. A pipe of impressive diameter is suitable for the mixer body, and if one was not found, then it can be made of a sheet of iron. When making a press for fuel briquettes (with your own hands), you should make two trays, one of which will be used to receive finished products, while the other - to load the prepared material.
Assembly instruction
The channels will go to the base of the device, while 4 racks should be made from the corner, each of which will be 1.5 m long. They are installed and mounted vertically, the distance between them should be the same. At the next stage, a drum, which is necessary for mixing, should be made from a sheet of iron or a finished pipe.
If you have a failed washing machine, you can borrow a drum from it. This element is fixed to the uprights. If necessary, it can be supplemented with an electric motor. If the motor turned out to be too high-speed, it is necessary to use a gearbox, because sometimes it is not possible to lower the rotation speed to the desired value due to the difference in pulley diameters.
And we continue to assemble a press for fuel briquettes with our own hands. In the next step, a tray is fixed under the drum, through which the material will enter the matrix. Holes, the diameter of which will be from 3 to 5 mm, must be made in the walls of the pipe used as a blank for the matrix. They are distributed as evenly as possible. The matrix should be fixed on the flange to which the removable bottom is fixed. It should be made of steel sheet, giving the appearance of a disk with eyes.
When a briquette press is made from sawdust, the technology must be followed. Having become acquainted with it, you can understand that the matrix should be strengthened under the loading tray to the base, and this can be done using mechanical fasteners or a welding machine. A round punch should be cut from a steel sheet, the diameter of which will allow the element to enter the matrix. To make the stem, you will need a 30-mm pipe, on which side a punch is welded, while the other end is attached to the hydraulic installation.
Features of manufacturing a screw press
You can also make a screw press for making fuel briquettes with your own hands, however, the work will be more complicated. With the help of such a mechanism, it will be possible to provide an extrusion method for the production of briquettes, which is often considered by the example of a home meat grinder or juicer.
For the operation of such equipment, the raw materials will need to be placed in a receiving hopper, from which it will be moved by a screw into a tapering conical channel. At this stage, compression occurs, and the screw press will develop a very high force. As a result, it will be possible to get real firewood from sawdust, which will look like a hexagon. In the process, they undergo heat treatment and are cut with a special knife.
In order to better understand the structure of such a mechanism, you should take a look at the drawing, which is presented in the article. Even if you use a hydraulic jack in a homemade press, you will not succeed in creating a force of more than 300 bar. Therefore, you should abandon factory technology where water is not used. This is due to the fact that without connecting constituents briquettes cannot be obtained. As practice shows, the screw press for sawdust briquettes is the most difficult to make with your own hands. The reasons are commonplace. It is not so simple to make parts on your own, and production costs will be high. For the case, it is necessary to take high-quality steel, an electric drive is also useful. This design requires an engine with a minimum power of 7 kW. Next, it’s small: you just have to put everything together using the drawing.
Conclusion
The oil mill briquette press is manufactured using the same technology as described above, when the design is based on a drum from a washing machine. In this case, the difference will only consist in the fact that a spring with a disk of the same diameter as the punch should be welded to the bottom of the matrix. This will increase the efficiency of the equipment, because the extraction of briquettes will take less time.