Advice on building a coffee roaster?

[Marc Brevoort]

I'm ready to swap my popcorn popper for something a bit bigger. Based on price and feature set it is looking like it will have to be a custom build. I'd like a nice look as well. Plastics melt at roasting tempetatures though so the laser cutter is of limited use and hunting for just the right prefab parts depends too much on luck. Sheet metal might work but have little idea how to work it. Help?

[Eric Rowen]

Have you an idea of the component parts of the said roaster?

For example the part holding the beans, open or closed, large or small size and shape?

How would the heat be supplied, blow lamp?  gas ring?  electric element? 

If the part holding the beans has to be water tight (ish) and not corrode and not plastic then the metal has to be sat stainless steel.  In which case both forming it (ss work hardens) and making joints (welded) would be very difficult.  

Possibly use part of a canteen like thermos or a pet food dish both of which available in stainless steel. 

Mild steel would corrode and plating it not an option, copper easy to work and soften once it work hardens but again corrosion, jointing and therefore hygene a problem. 

On Thu, Jan 19, 2017 at 12:32 PM, Marc Brevoort <klei...@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm ready to swap my popcorn popper for something a bit bigger. Based on price and feature set it is looking like it will have to be a custom build. I'd like a nice look as well. Plastics melt at roasting tempetatures though so the laser cutter is of limited use and  hunting for just the right prefab parts depends too much on luck. Sheet metal might work but have little idea how to work it. Help?

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[Marc Brevoort]

It would be fluid bed style machine inspired by sonofresco kit. Probably a vacuum cleaner motor for the air flow past an eectric heating element. Tpuch screen, profiles, pid temperature control - that's the easy part and mostly under control in the popcorn popper version. But glass tubes, metal cones and otherwise bits of just the right shapes and sizes and hard to find. Then there's joining ot all up, so actually building the appliance. I could use some hand holding in the hardware engineering department.