Home Made Hydraulic Press design

[Peter Saczek]

Hi all, 

I'm relatively new to cider making, and even newer to this group... But have already enjoyed looking through some of the interesting discussions on here.

After having a go with both basket and rack & cloth presses over the last few years, I've decided to try my hand at designing and building a press. There's a few motivations for doing so: to remind myself of the engineering basics that I haven't used properly since university, to learn to weld, to achieve better efficiency than we're getting from the basket press, to get more juice from each pressing, and.... to just make something!

The main objective is to end up with a press that can do about 50litres per pressing, while being relatively mobile and collapsible, so it can be stored efficiently (to keep the wife appeased).

The picture below is the latest iteration of design (heavily guided by the Claude J book), with the following:

100x50 c-channels for cross beams

60x40x4 box section uprights bolted to the crossbeams at the bottom and held with 20mm stainless pins at the top.

650mm between uprights

Around 500mm maximum pressing height (potentially adjustable by lowering the top crossbeams

10 ton hydraulic ram (6" stroke) with hand pump.

200x150x10 plate to transmit and spread the load from the actuator

500x500x5 bottom plate stiffened with more box section

Cheeses would be around 60mm deep and between 500mm and 400mm wide (to get ~50 to 80psi pressing pressure)

Racks to be made of 6mm HDPE sheet or varnished plywood

Cloths to be PP mesh fabric (or whatever I can afford once I've bought everything else)

550 X 550 oak slab to apply the pressure to the cheese

Before I start to buy materials, it would be great to hear your feedback or lessons learnt from your many years of collective experience!

Cheers,

Pete

North Somerset, UK

[erik walther]

Hi Peter,

 Having experimented with something similar in the past using a store bought 12 ton shop press, I found the foot of the jack broke through the top plate almost immediately due to a

small surface area, and the relative brittleness of oak especially along its grain

 I would plan on spreading the force, and reinforcing that top plate. I couldn't speak to the yield you might expect. I wasn't impressed with what I got, but there are so many variables.

Regards,

Erik

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[Peter Saczek]

Thanks for the response, Erik.  Good point about spreading the load.

Interesting to hear you didn't get the yield from a similar design. I wonder what people would consider the key variables to affect the efficiency?

Cheers,

Pete

[radfordgraham333]

Hi Peter 

I put together a homemade rack and cloth press a couple years ago using a 12 ton shop press, ss juice tray, hdpe racks and high quality press cloths(oesco brand).

The yield was very good compared to my hydropress and not even close to my old basket press. I didn't actually record the yield but the pommace was comparatively very dry. 

For a top plate, I used a thin piece of hdpe sheet(1/4" if I'm remembering correctly) with a 3/4" piece of plywood cut to the same size as the hdpe just placed on top. Worked well enough. I used spacers made of plywood on top of the press plate and there was no issue with damaged wood from the force of the jack(I only used a 6 ton jack since this provided more than enough pressure). 

One thing I will mention is that for some of the apples I pressed, the hdpe racks would slip like crazy, so I ended up pressing some with just one or two layers which was a hassle but solved the problem.

When I use it again I plan to omit the racks all together as I'm sure that will fix the slippage issue. 

In terms of efficiency as long as the psi applied is enough, you will get a much better yield than other common home scale pressing methods. 

I based my entire design off of the specs in claudes book and it worked out very well. If you follow those, I think you'll make a press you're very happy with. 

Regards,

Graham

Sent from my Galaxy

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[James Turner]

Peter,

Since you’re starting from scratch I will humbly submit the press I designed and built for consideration. I borrowed design features from Herrick Kimball of Whizbang Cider - the circular rack system, from Vigo presses - fixed ram with moving rack base compressed from below, and Claude - using a large truck air shock or air spring to apply pressure. The air shock is rated for 90 psi, has a 10” stroke and with a 9” diameter is able to provide >60 psi to my rack and maintains pressure as the cheese height decreases somewhat. I get between 65% and 70% yields from 60 lb (<30 kg) of mash. Placing your pressure source beneath the rack frees up space above and allows the press to reset itself with gravity. Pneumatic pressure does require some safety considerations and a source of compressed air but there is no oil or need to manually pump a jack or wasted water. Good luck and have fun with your design.

JT

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[Eric Tyira]

That’s sweet!

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[Claude Jolicoeur]

Nice press designs there.

If it may help, here are photos of my current press:

https://goo.gl/photos/XvykrqJ8x3V5xPR16

Most of there are for the first iteration however. On the last photo of the album, we can see the last iteration where I added rods to improve the stability (before that, the rods could bend if the cake was not very precisely aligned, thus causing instability).

I now run this press with 2 bottle jacks, 8 tons each, for racks that are 43 cm square. This delivers quite a bit more pressure than what Peter's design proposes.

And to JT, I really like your implementation of air springs. One thing that is of utmost importance with these is they need to be well fixed and guided. It happened to me once that one slipped while pressurized and wow, this thing just flew with so much energy. It was really frightening.

Wondering however why you made the top crossbeam in wood while all the rest is steel...

[Peter Saczek]

Definitely some food for thought. 

I've found plenty of discussion online and in books regarding the various materials for racks, and had always imagined they were at least partially required to make the cheese structure stable. That being said, I came across an old video here where there's no racks. I'll take your point graham about slipping, and am tending to think plywood with cuts would provide more grip?

I agree JT's press looks great. Seems a very elegant design. I particularly like how the lower platform rides on the uprights.

Thanks Claude for the link to your pictures. Interesting you've moved to two bottle jack's, if I'm right you could get around 120psi from that setup? I guess I could eventually do similar with either hydraulic rams or bottle jack's (maybe with some localised reinforcement).

Many thanks for the inspiration!

Pete

[James Turner]

Claude

I agree that the air spring is a potential bomb. Mine is bolted in above and below. There are stops on the uprights to prevent over extension. I attached signage to insure that the air source is disconnected when not actively pressing and the air source itself is regulated to a pressure less than 90 psi. I chose to use wood crossbeams because I had some 2 x 8 glue-lam scraps. The top crossbeams have since been replaced by solid oak due to cracks forming at the lower bolt holes. If this fails steel channel is the next step. I really like the air spring. Thanks for the idea.

JT

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[Steilhead Cider]

The press we use is blacksmith built, from 100x75x5mm c channel and a ss tray.  It is massively strong, similar dimensions to yours, Peter, and has a 20-tonne ram (bottle jack) which I use to the full pressure.  I reckon you need over 100 lbs/sq in.  And I have never used racks except as an experiment to compare extraction rates, and only once had any slippage or cheese collapse. The former for each layer of the cheese is maybe  60mm deep and has wings that fit against the press uprights so that each hair is directly above the one below.  I use an oak top plate, 75mm thick, laminated in 3 layers in alternate grain directions, glued and heavily screwed together.

For a couple of seasons we used a proper Voran twin-bed hydraulic press but found it too big, noisy and time-consuming to clean, and I'd like to sell it.

[Claude Jolicoeur]

As I was pressing today to make my winter cider, I took a couple of shots showing the current configuration of my press.

I now start the run with a screw as it permits faster displacement than a jack. I use the screw until the pressure buildup makes it hard to go further.

When the first part of the run is done I then install the 2 bottle jacks (8 tons each) to build a good pressure in the cheese. Since the jacks have a limited travel, I anyway had to reset them and add blocks at the middle of the run. So I find that combining the screw with jacks is more efficient, and probably a bit faster. I had to go with 2 jacks as the screw was taking the center position. But this configuration also has advantages with a better distribution of the load.

[dave pert]

I was looking at building a custom press with hydraulic ram and hand hand pump last year, but ended up converting a good-quality workshop press instead. Originally I'd wanted to do a 20 ton ram with a 500 or 600mm stroke, but the cost and availability of such a ram put me off - as soon as you look into such things you begin to realise what good value Voran presses are. In the course of my research I spoke to a couple of hydraulic engineering firms to discuss requirements. I was told that you should leave 15-20% headroom in any hydraulic system if you're going to be holding pressure for any length of time. This effectively makes a 10 ton cylinder into an 8 ton one, or a 20 a 16.. You might want to take this into account in your design, your cheese size sounds far too large for a 10(8) ton setup. I suspect that with bottle jacks it's possible to run them closer to the limit as there are fewer points of possible failure in a cast unit than there are in a pump-hose-cylinder system, and also because they usually have a built-in bypass valve.

I agree with Max from Steilhead  that 100psi is the number you should be chasing, or a bit more. I'd also say that 60mm is possibly too fat for a cheese (especially if you go for a lower pressure system), for a couple of reasons:

- Thinner cheeses let the juice out more easily - I base this on observation of the top cheese which is often half to three quarter thickness depending on what pomace I have left when I get to it, it's always significantly drier after pressing than the other cheeses, Including the the bottom one.

- Taller cheeses can expand more in all directions when pressed - your 60mm height will allow the cheese to widen by about 25mm at each side under pressure. Re-do your pressure calcs taking this into account and they'll be fairly poor. A 40mm cheese won't allow nearly as much expansion, a bit more hassle to build the stack but press cloths are cheap compared to hydraulics. I ran my new press with 60mm cheeses last year, this year I'm building a 40mm former to keep the pressure up.

Having used a fixed ram system for a season I can confirm they're a lot less hassle than repeatedly lifting jacks in and out of the press as you add blocks. Attached are a couple of photos of my converted workshop press. I went fairly belt and braces with the strengthening. Base plate is made of 6 lengths of 100x50x5mm box section I had a local engineering firm seam-weld together for me. Underneath is a 15mm mild steel plate tacked on to stop the press's work-table biting  into them. Then there's some 25mm ply on top of the base which the tray sits on. The top plate is 2 sheets of 25mm ply glued together, with a sheet of 10mm HDPE glued/screwed onto them, which goes against the cheeses. I routed grid lines into the HDPE to make it less slip-prone. On top of the ply I stack (rather than affix, as they'd make the whole thing too heavy to lift) a metal pressure plate ( a sheet of 300x300x10mm mild steel with another of 200x200x15mm tacked on top of it). Under the ram head I put a piece of 100x100x25mm steel, plus some larger, thinner plates, to stop the ram eating into the oak press blocks. Works really well, though did come to about £2000 all in, once I'd had the stainless tray fabricated. Don't buy a cheapo press to base it on, the first press I tried was half the price of the "real" one I finally used, came from china before being re-badged by a previously-reputable UK tool company, required about 1.5 hours of self assembly (using parts which scarcely resembled the "instructions") and failed during the 4th application of pressure the ram to test for safety. Thankfully I was only pressing blocks of wood to see if the system would hold. A poppet valve in the cylinder hose failed and it would not retract. Being chinese it was made of totally non-standard fittings so I couldn't fix it. Then 1.5 hours to disassemble etc, etc... Wish I'd bought the decent press from the outset, arrived fully assembled and commissioned and has a 2 speed pump unit which means you can press rapidly at first, then increase the power to make the increased pressure strokes easier to apply. And, as none of the alterations I made are lasting, it's always there if I need to pop out a wheel bearing the rest of the year.

[Miguel Pereda]

This year we, in the club of friends of the apple of Siero in Asturias, (CSAM) have built ourselves this cider press. Adapted to the space available and to our style of cider.

Miguel A. Pereda

[Claude Jolicoeur]

That is a real beauty Miguel.

Totally in the spirit of the traditional Asturian presses while being slightly modernized...

How many cortes do you make with this one?

I like the rockers - their look and function is just like valve rockers in a car engine. These obviously permit you to reduce the height quite a bit.

I guess you've had some help from a good mechanical engineer for the design...

Claude

[Miguel Pereda]

Hello Claude. We made only one corte, we don't need more. It was made by one of our partners who is very skilled but has no engineering studies but a lot of talent.
Miguel A. Pereda.

[dave sargent]

Dear All,

I made a hydraulic press out of the steel legs of a portacabin and a 10 tonne bottle jack from a pipe bender.. which therefore retracted when pressure was released. it took about 60kg of pommice a time and we had a two sets of cheese racks system operating so we could stack one and press another..

it worked really well.. and we now need to find it a new home, as our Cider Shed owners are moving home

its on FB market place.. message me off group.

many thanks

Dave

North Yorkshire

[Peter Saczek]

Hello all, 

Hopefully bumping this thread back up is ok. 

Following my initial post (above), I've made some progress on the build, but somehow still not finished!!... See picture. As we get closer to pressing, I'm now rushing to get it done. Budget is out of the window, and I'm after a little bit of advice.

The cloth fabric I have bought is relatively coarse (about 3.5mm holes), but seems pretty tough. I'm wondering if this is a bit too coarse? (Apples will be milled with a spiedel mill)

I've bought 9 sheets of 6mm HDPE. I can imagine that if left smooth, the these sheets used for racks could tend to slip, as suggested by a previous poster. I'm therefore planning to cut shallow grooves into either side using a circular saw. I imagine this would also help the juice out. Does anyone have any advice on the number and size of grooves?

Any other thoughts would also be welcome!... And I'll make sure to report on how it performs later in the year.

Cheers,

Pete 

[James Turner]

6mm doesn’t leave much after grooving. Try without grooving first. Much easier to clean. Juice flow doesn’t require grooves, it will flow along fabric.

Happy pressing,

Jim

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[gareth chapman]

I grooved a couple of 10mm HDPE sheets it was a bit of a faff so didn't bother with the rest and it hasn't made any difference.
I use 80% shade netting as press cloth

[Peter Saczek]

Hi all, 

I'm resurrecting this post one final time, just to report on how my press build turned out, and to share the main lessons I've learnt.

A few pictures and video are in the following:  https://photos.app.goo.gl/9zRuy7V3X4L7p51j6

We ended up only pressing around 200kg, and got from that around 100litres. The yield seemed lower than I was expecting, but the pomace was very dry after pressing, and the SG was pretty high. I imagine the dry summer we had may have some role in this.

The main benefit we found from the new press was that we only did two and a bit pressing to get through all of the apples. Which we as a good improvement on the previous basket press, which was definitely the bottleneck previously.

In terms of the press itself, I've the following observations.

- the pressure from the '10t' ram was plenty to leave pretty dry pomace.

- the pp fabric was not too coarse, although this might be linked to the scratter and appless we had 

- the 6mm HDPE racks were fine with no grooves cut, and were very easy to clean

- I made a form with 'ears' on each side, which rested against the uprights of the press, to ensure each cheese was directly on top of the previous. This worked very well, and was probably the thing that meant the pressings weren't a disaster!

- the handles (previously intended for my kid's garden slide) fitted to the pressure plate were very handy

- 4 sheets of 16mm ply laminated together was plenty strong for the pressure plate

- as the ram has a travel of around 6", plenty of blocks to put between the ram and the pressure plate was necessary.

- doing metal work (cutting/grinding/welding/painting) outside the back door isn't ideal... 

- welding isn't that hard ... Good Welding is.

This year's plan is to learn Tig welding, and make a stainless juice tray.

Hope that helps someone... Let me know if you have any questions, or thoughts for improvement!

Cheers,

Pete 

[erik walther]

Nice job Peter!

"Welding isn't that hard ... Good Welding is."

Had a good chuckle over this, very quotable.

 

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[Trevor Wolf]

Peter,

Nice press! In my experience, the grind seems to be a bit too coarse (from what I can tell looking through the bags) - this may be attributing to your lower yields.

Regards,

TREVOR WOLF TECHNICAL SERVICES SPECIALIST HEAD OFFICE 149 BUD MIL DR BUFFALO, NY 14206

Email: tre...@goodnature.com  Phone: +1 716-389-4247  Web: www.goodnature.com Social: @GoodnaturePro

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