ok so now we have gone all the way round in LALA land shall we start again with the OP
the request was for palletised wax the reason they asked for it is that it comes in a loose form that allows them to scoop an amount up and use it in what ever product they wish, melting pots of mixing tubs. the reason they asked for pelletised form is that other wise it comes in a 25kg block of solid wax. the stuff i buy comes in 20kg blocks and to break it up i use a sledge hammer.
I can order wax in several forms,
cappings as formed, dirt cheap
block, cheapest,
processed block, not as cheap
pellet, middle price
sheet, plain, middle price, imprinted top price
you can also order wax in colours cleaned natural or dirty natural.
to produce a wax pellet.
the machine you require is called a compounder or pellet extruder. google the plastics industry rather than lead working.wax and lead working are about as far a way as you want to be really, i would try plastics, or the food industries if you want areas to research. the machine sthat form wood pellets are completly different and are no use what so ever. they use a completly different set of principles to work on, and little john patten lead shot maker it of absolutly no use what so ever.
An extruder /compounder or rotational dia formed pellet maker.
it works by a screw pushing the wax down a barrel with heater bands around it to heat the product. when it has reached the end of the barrel there is an unheated dia plate, for you we will require a 3mm to 5mm plate holes. this is normally about the size of a large dinner plate and is covered in holes, as the wax is extruded throught this plate it cools, if left alone we will form strings of bees wax . we then have a set of rotating knife blades below the dia but touching the dias surface, these blades chop the wax into pellets as they spin round, the larger the pellet required the slower the blade speed the smaller the pellet the faster the blade speed.
these then fall into a drum of water, carried along slightly away from the machine and then they are normall sent into a centrafugal drier, or basically the clothes dries of old . and out falls dried formed pellets.
costs wise we are going to be talking at least several grand second hand,
google the trade version of second hand pages etc/machine mart does them often
ok so we only have 200kg to do and the chance of other later so we need to find a way to produce a wax form of a loose pellet.
for small batches under ten kilos i would use a straight kitchen grater and a pair of gloves, why idiots blag they have just choped the end of their fingers off amazies me.
its very simple and slow but does work and produces a form people can work with, screw the grater to a block of wood to hold it steady or do it the other way round get the block of wood to hold the wax still and move the grater?
now lets talk larger or quicker, how about one of those choppers where theres a cranking handle opn the side of it and you stuf the wax in the top, i call the meolunix graters but i am sure there is a proper name. the one i used to have had the small holes and large holes and i used the larger sized version
how about casting our pellets
if you can find a plastic food tray that is used for chocolate casting that makes say small stars or beads then why not pour in the hot wax scrap it flat and flick them out into a water bucket to cool off or a tea towel, several trays and make a production line. try a look for a plastic sheet with a form of dimple on it, i think the ones i have seen were designed for the metal industrial factories use, it was rubber mat three foot wide and ten foot long, it was covered in 10mm round inset dimples /indents. i would use a plaster trowel to spread it about to fill the holes whilst the wife poured a buck of hot moulton wax over the top. give it a couple of minutes to scrap off the surpless wax and re stock the pots, flip the mat over and flex it and thee wax lumps would fall out
we are still talking small quanities here so lets get busy
so we need some form or mechanical drive here.
never tried it but i will say a old kitchen blender from a car boot and a lump of wax does sound reasonable, you would need to keep the wax cold to stop the fiction melting it, may be freeze before hand first!!, duno, try it and let me know??
how about an old fashions meat mincer the ones with the hand cranked feed, cut the wax down to small blocks and try ot force it through, again never tried but does in theroy appeal.
cause i am a hairy builder and its back to what you know .
when i do it i use a wood electric power planer, set to the most coarse setting going and the extraction bag off i blizt my blocks with that instead to do my pellets , well shavings, i used to use a very very old fashiond tool called a SURF FORM to do them with, never clogs and never needed sharpening and lasted years, two handles no fingers neer sharp blades and very simple to use, pick up and push.
want to go to a larger version, well i built one .
it was a tray of 50 mm by 50mm timber a metre long and 300mm wide. stapled to the top of it was a length of expemet mesh from work, some times called reinforcing mesh or expanded mesh. it cam a foot wide off the roll and was miles long, as sharp and any thing i have ever used .
want still larger, but still cheap!!
my next step was to buy a length of 25mm and 32mm diameter waste pipe, cut it into one foot long lengths and use to cast wax bars, nice an easy shape to store by the way stacks easy and stand it in a wax melter and it slowly slides downwards, also good as a church candle mould. i used to cast all my wax into these moulds, when i got asked for any large quantites we use to drop them through our garden shredder outside.
theres enough tips for now and why the person requested pellets, call them back and say you dont do pellets just incase they are using a machine fed system but you do, do chips or the same size.
