Hammer Mill
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Operation
The basic principle is straightforward. A hammermill is essentially a steel drum containing a vertical or horizontal roating shaft or drum on which hammers are mounted. The hammers are free to swing on the ends of the cross, or fixed to the central rotor. The rotor is spun at a high speed inside the drum while material is fed into a feed hopper. The material is impacted by the hammer bars and is thereby shredded and expelled through screens in the drum of a selected size. Hammer mill apple shredder for juicing.
Small grain hammermills can be operated on household current. Large automobile shredders can use one or more 2000 horsepower (1.5 MW) diesel engines to power the hammermill.
The Screenless hammer mill uses air flow to separate small particles from larger ones. It is designed to be more reliable, and is also claimed to be much cheaper and more energy efficient than regular hammermills. (Taken from Wikipedia.)--Dennis 15:24, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
Hammer Mill (HM) - it appears that CEB walls, wood rafters, and green roofs thrown on top of a roof by a hammer mill are a great method for building with 100% onsite material. Straw or branches are chopped by a hammer mill - and these have a strong ejection port that may throw such biomass on top of a roof to decompose into a green roof. The hammer mill may chop straw or newspaper for straw-clay insulation. The hammer mill is the great aid for any organic farming - with any type of compost chopped for facilitating decay. Critical to soil fertility if enhanced soil building is required. The hammer mill can also chop a large variety of other items, perhaps plastic for recycling. We are using one currently to make mulch for Organoponic Raised Bed Gardening and to mulch our orchard. May be applicable to mulching wood for making compressed wood gas.
Desert Harvesters: Mesquite trees represent one of the most promising forms of resilient, decentralized, and drought resistant food crops in the American Desert Southwest (and other arid climates). Desert Harvesters [1], a non-profit organization in Tucson, Arizona, is currently using a trailer-mounted hammer mill to facilitate decentralized mesquite bean processing (into highly nutritious mesquite flour) in southern Arizona. This organization may be an excellent partner for development of an open-source hammer mill, and their work demonstrates the value and potential for hammer mill deployment.