Making a grain mill

[jcdammeyer]

Silly question perhaps.
If I wanted to build one of these:

2 Roller Pro Brewer Grain Mill (Heat Treated 1144 Steel - (Lasts 10X Longer))

6" long, 2" diameter, 2-Roller knob adjustable gap drill drive professional grain mill

monsterbrewinghardware.com

They mention using induction hardened 1144 steel and a 2" diameter 1' piece at McMaster Carr goes for $54 while 3' for $125.
For the occasional grinding of grains to make a mash for beer brewing is a hardened steel even needed? I can see a commercial operation or once a week usage but once per month maybe?
The trouble with having a lathe and a mill is like that saying "when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail".

Well when you have a machine shop one shouldn't buy but build...

Comments?

 

[djberta]

Could you use one of the smaller hand crank style ones? Or vevor electric-grain-grinder-mill? Or repurpose a rolling mill?

Maybe look and see if you can use the shafts from hydraulic cylinders? Or surplus large axle shaft?

 

[TorontoBuilder]

Silly question perhaps.
If I wanted to build one of these:

2 Roller Pro Brewer Grain Mill (Heat Treated 1144 Steel - (Lasts 10X Longer))

6" long, 2" diameter, 2-Roller knob adjustable gap drill drive professional grain mill

monsterbrewinghardware.com

They mention using induction hardened 1144 steel and a 2" diameter 1' piece at McMaster Carr goes for $54 while 3' for $125.
For the occasional grinding of grains to make a mash for beer brewing is a hardened steel even needed? I can see a commercial operation or once a week usage but once per month maybe?
The trouble with having a lathe and a mill is like that saying "when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail".

Well when you have a machine shop one shouldn't buy but build...

Comments?

marketing hype, a grain rolling mill does not require hardened rollers.

Note, every supplier I frequented in Toronto had a commercial grain mill for customers to use when they bought grains. I still have a cast iron crank style grain mill I got for brewing, but the fact is I've used it more to crack grains for making bread than I ever did to make beer.

 

[historicalarms]

The best commercial roller we had here on the farm and used for 1000's of bushels of cattle feed had the rolls grooved like a power take off shaft ( only finer sized grooves...think of Marlin microgroove rifling). The two rolls meshed together and seemed to grab the grain kernels more efficiently than other models we had and was easier to set for coarseness of grind.

 

[PeterT]

1144 only has about 0.5% carbon so I don't think it can be heat treated in the (heat-quench-temper) conventional way. They say induction hardened but maybe its a surface treatment (adding carbon) to preserve the knurls? I am no expert on cracking but I was reading about coffee bean & pepper mills once upon a time. Cutting or grinding action is undesirable end result. Any friction heat adversely affects taste. The cracking process is about partially & sufficiently gripping the grain & fracturing it into some preferred orientation / shape / size for end use. Coffee beans & pepper corns have a relatively big change from initial size to end result, relatively small batch volumes & machine form factor, so they end up as kind of auger shape. Not sure what your end product should look like but probably similar considerations but using rollers. Is it once through or progressive roller gap settings? Is there something to even out the grain load across the rollers?

https://www.practicalmachinist.com/forum/threads/help-needed-hardening-stressproof.81323/

 

[TorontoBuilder]

Grain

1144 only has about 0.5% carbon so I don't think it can be heat treated in the (heat-quench-temper) conventional way. They say induction hardened but maybe its a surface treatment (adding carbon) to preserve the knurls? I am no expert on cracking but I was reading about coffee bean & pepper mills once upon a time. Cutting or grinding action is undesirable end result. Any friction heat adversely affects taste. The cracking process is about partially & sufficiently gripping the grain & fracturing it into some preferred orientation / shape / size for end use. Coffee beans & pepper corns have a relatively big change from initial size to end result, relatively small batch volumes & machine form factor, so they end up as kind of auger shape. Not sure what your end product should look like but probably similar considerations but using rollers. Is it once through or progressive roller gap settings? Is there something to even out the grain load across the rollers?

https://www.practicalmachinist.com/forum/threads/help-needed-hardening-stressproof.81323/

View attachment 53877

the style of grain mill John posted are designed to crack the grains open and expose the inner endosperm so that enzymes can convert the starches to sugars. The gap is adjustable to control the size of the particles to some extent and accommodate different grain sizes. It is not meant to grind like a coffee grinder into very small particles.

The rollers do need texture to grip slippery husks otherwise the grains wont feed thru. Any decent knurl pattern will do for this.