Thursday, March 15, 2012

[papercreters] Re: MIXERS;

Hey Dan,

I need to get to the point where I can buy some land to build on first. My life took a major left turn a couple of years ago, and I'm just now getting back to where I can work toward my ultimate goal of building my own home again. That begins with rebuilding a nest egg to purchase some land with. It may be a while before a finalize a design for my mixer, and I personally will no doubt adapt to whatever salvaged materials are close by and cheap when I start building it.

I was throwing the idea out there for discussion to give everyone alternatives to consider.

However, since you ask, I'll attempt a logical answer to your question. It seems to me that the appropriate amount of batteries depends upon the anticipated workload of the mixer. If one expects to only mix up one small batch of papercrete every few days, a small battery pack could handle that no problem. If one expects to churn out many tons of papercrete continuously for an entire day, then a huge battery bank will be needed.

Clearly a battery powered mixer would have maximum advantages in an off grid situation. I envision someone building a battery powerpack that could power multiple devices and be charged by multiple sources. I don't envision spending a bunch of money on batteries and dedicating them exclusively to a mixer to have them sit idle a lot of the time to sulfate up and die from lack of use. I envision some kind of dolly or small trailer to hold the battery pack, with the potential to hold a papercete mixer as well. That would allow for flexibility to use the battery pack for other purposes, like powering other construction tools.

If it were me, I would probably try to buy some used T105's. An excellent source might be searching Electric Car conversion websites. Look for someone close by geographically that needs to swap out a battery pack that doesn't have the maximum capacity that it once had, but still has some usable life left. Could save a lot of money getting cheap batteries that would be "good enough" especially since it's not like the batteries running down would strand anyone out in the middle of nowhere and need a tow truck to get home. Of course, buyer beware. There are used batteries, and then there are dead batteries. The buyer needs to understand how to test them to be sure they are getting batteries that still have worthwhile punch in them. This may not be a path everyone else could take, but I'm confident I could determine which ones are worth acquiring. It's not difficult for someone to learn how to test a battery either, but it's important to do it properly. Just putting a volt meter on it won't tell you nearly enough. A small load tester will tell you much more. There are plenty of websites out there that can explain the process for testing a used deep cycle battery, so I won't bother to repeat that informaton here.

8 used T105 batteries that have maybe half or better capacity left could probably power a good sized mixer for the better part of a working day since most of the time the mixer isn't running while you load it and dump it. I figure the mixer can only work as fast as the human(s) can put the papercrete into the forms or onto the wall. Just guessing on the time. Lots of undefined variables in this hypothetical situation. Accurate predictions are impossible, but that ballpark guess "feels" about right to me. T105's weigh 62lbs each, so that's a lot of battery. 500lbs or so for a good sized mixer.

For something like a small barrel mixer that makes a couple of batches a day for hand plastering papercrete, a single deep cycle 12V marine battery should be sufficient.

It all depends upon how someone expects to use their mixer, particularly the quantity of papercrete they expect to make between charge cycles.

I hope this explanation makes sense.


--- In papercreters@yahoogroups.com, "Clarke2" <clarke2@...> wrote:
>
> How many pounds of batteries are you planning to use for your mixer? How many gallon mixer?
>
> Just curious,
> Dan

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