foundation rollers

[hedgerow pete]

ok so i cant afford the proper versions and evn struggle to find cheapish rollers from europe and china so heres the question

what sort of pressure exists between the rollers??

i am looking to weld up a steel frame and bodge a few rollers, cogs and bearings together but the roller would have to be cast from either resin and fibre glass or from cold casting resin as i dont want to pay for properly engraved metal rollers.

i could if i wanted to dig out my old metal casting gear and cast them in ali but i dont know what the finish would be like as it would have to be lost wax cast rather than sand and i have not done that at the shed before

has any one else tried going down this route?

i have at the moment a set of home made fibre glass plate and the omni present mangle but would like to improve on them

or does anyone know of a cheap set you can buy from some where and at what costs

 

[victor meldrew]

ok so i cant afford the proper versions and evn struggle to find cheapish rollers from europe and china so heres the question

what sort of pressure exists between the rollers??

i am looking to weld up a steel frame and bodge a few rollers, cogs and bearings together but the roller would have to be cast from either resin and fibre glass or from cold casting resin as i dont want to pay for properly engraved metal rollers.

i could if i wanted to dig out my old metal casting gear and cast them in ali but i dont know what the finish would be like as it would have to be lost wax cast rather than sand and i have not done that at the shed before

has any one else tried going down this route?

i have at the moment a set of home made fibre glass plate and the omni present mangle but would like to improve on them

or does anyone know of a cheap set you can buy from some where and at what costs

Peter Hewit from Yorkshire B K eepers
uses a pair of rubber rollered squeezers ( Mangle) .
He has a container of molten wax , he has an arced board complete with handle ( looks like an oversized blotter ) which he uses to pick up wax from the container; he first dips his blotter in cold water, picks up a coating of wax from top of container, this he removes easily (the wetting sees to that), he then places it between his hertzog plates and passes same through his mangle. The result is a perfect piece of foundation . he demonstrates that compressed foundation is much less brittle than cast foundation
Trial and error is used to find correct tension on mangle !

John Wilkinson

 

[Midland Beek]

Not the reply you want, but it would be a lot easier making smooth foundation.

 

[BKF Admin]

How are the rollers normaly made:
CNC milling/engraving?
spark erosion?
knurled?

 

[hedgerow pete]

i have tried plain wax foundation and my lot hate it. i have also tried starter strips of differant sizes but what i want and the girls do is differant they would rather do brace comb accross the frames rather than inside.

as for making them i would have through that they could be easily made by roller impression or engraving, i would have thought spark erosion would not be needed.

as for the starter sheets i was going to either go with dipped boards producing 3mm thick plain sheets or if i could get hold of a propper version a friend was telling me he casts 12mm thick slabs and then feeds them into his rollers and they produce 12 foot long strips.

problem is i cant seem to find one below a grand realy.
i have looked on most of the china and indian websites but cant seam to find a maker of the cheap ones

 

[hedgerow pete]

i use at the moment a pair of fibre glass moulded sheets and dipped plain sheets of wax and a mangle. is it just me or do all beeks have mangles?

make the sheet and run it through simple but slow

i was thinking or going and getting the fibre glass sheets made into a press set up but i dont realy like cast sheet i would rather have compressed foundation

the thing is as a friend pointed out to me if i was going to go to the time and trouble to make a small roller press it would not cost much to go all the way and make a proper cylinder pick up roller and then run it through the foundation rollers which is realy what the big boys do. he then went on to the idea of setting up a transit van with it in and traveling the country going to set fixed days at differant association groups and doing fundation rollering for a job.

his idea is a good one as a club to band together enough wax to make it work but what he would charge and could do for a days work is yet to be seen

 

[hedgerow pete]

i just though what about making a pair of fibre glass sheets with the wax impressions on it and then wrapping them around the mangle at home ?

 

[Mike a]

Pete

Not sure if this will be of any help as no doubt you've already thought about it. But the only I can come up with is buy a sheet of plastic foundation and experiment with it, my first though would be to use silicon rubber to get a negative impression if it sets hard enough or plaster even then some thing else like wax to get a positive impression to make your press plates out of Aluminium.

But well worth a play in the old casting sand box and videoing it for us all...

Just remember the half cell off set on the horizontal and vertical.

 

[hedgerow pete]

my old home made set of plates were made from fibre glassing a dadant sheet of foundation but i have a pair of plastic foundation sheets to play with aswell now

 

[hedgerow pete]

i have just been on the trirantes website and they dont sell lost wax casting compounds any more. does anyone on the forum know where i can get hold of some from?

 

[busybeephilip]

I actually have a set of bought Swienty rollers some time ago and they are really good - a lot better than any casting plate method. The pressure required for a sheet of std brood using a 3mm plain sheet is a lot more than you would imagine. I doubt if fibre glass or silicon would be up to the job. I had to purchase a high torque motor and gearbox cos my arms could not turn the rollers, its ok for shallow but anything bigger definately needs a motor.

Getting the meshing correct would be another problem. I would love to get a set of Drone base rollers but they are just too expensive now. If you can figure out a way of producing 2 identical perfectly symetrical steel rollers bonded to an aluminium alloy dye plate then I too would be making a machine.

My rollers are definately not cnc cut (no cut marks) but I would say done by lost wax casting would be a good bet, you cant see any join lines on the pattern face or at the sides. On the cell faces you can see that they are not perfectly flat in that the have a mold type impression. High probability they are cast using silicon rubber molding. I recon the roller axle is centred in a lathe after casting so that they turn true. The gears are readily available off the shelf. The rolller mountings need to be solid enought to take the pressure

If youre planning to do this my email is <<([email protected])>> as I'd love to work out a method of making a drone roller set, two heads are better than one!

 

[hedgerow pete]

what i am using now is a set of solid wooden rollers fitted to the mangle to increase there force,

i have tried several times to make a fibre glass pattern which is easy, but to then match that pattern so it is continuous when you fold the lot around a wooden bar is not so easy so the wax sheet has a casting line as it where.

i would suggest the idea of two flat fibreglass plates hinged at the one end and then just slap them through the mangle,

to make a form of home made cast rollers you will need to work it this way

build a roller skeleton i would suggest a steel frame and a 20mm roller bearing axel and then around it i would cast a lost wax method pattern, proberly out of alliminium with extra sillicne to make it easier to work with,

all you need to work out is the circumfrence to a resonable detail

 

[Poly Hive]

Not sure why you want to use rollers, unless you are trying to match the vendors product?

When I made foundation I used a press, and with everything set up it was quite possible to make some 40 brood sheets an hour. They came out the press a standard size and had to be cut to shape, pizza cutter works very well for that. They were large enough to make Langstroth brood, if not Mod Dadant but I am not sure now on the Dadant.

Yes it was brittle, and thicker than normal foundation, but on the up side the bees loved it and used the thickness to pull out the cell walls faster and when built it seemed to be just the same as normal foundation.

Down side is that it needs to be installed in wired frames. At the time I wired all of mine so it made no odds.

I commend it. Esp if you are using your own wax, then you have no issues with contaminants.

PH

 

[AnotherNewBee]

Getting the plates made sounds like a job for a 3d printer using aluminium powder. Get them printed as thick sleeves then slide them over wood or metal rollers for support and arrange the gearing so they line up as required. With the right circumference the cells can be the right size with a continuous unbroken pattern all the way round the plates.

Devise some mechanism for simultaneously embedding wires, and you might have yourself a saleable product.

No idea how much a 3d printing company would charge, but I've wanted to get involved since I first heard of it.

 

[hedgerow pete]

Getting the plates made sounds like a job for a 3d printer using aluminium powder. Get them printed as thick sleeves then slide them over wood or metal rollers for support and arrange the gearing so they line up as required. With the right circumference the cells can be the right size with a continuous unbroken pattern all the way round the plates.

No idea how much a 3d printing company would charge, but I've wanted to get involved since I first heard of it.

eh!!

whats that in brummie or english, please

the reason i wanted to try to make a set of rollers is , thats what everyone else has?

i used to dip a perpex sheet to get my blanks and then pop it between to fibreglass plates and then mangle roller it, i found the rubber coating on the rollers perished after 50 years so i went to two solid rollers instead, its hard to find a mangle spare parts, lol

after the foundation was rollered it was templated and cut to size, (12 x14 or super) then stacked untill i needed it,

the wax was always fixed into the frames with a wire heater set up of a piece of timber four nails and a car battery charger,

i have always preffered to wire my own frames because i prefere horizntal wires and four of them on a 12 by 14 and two on a super

i liked the idea of a roller because i can dip lots of sheets and then ust pass them straight through the rollers once rather than at the moment twice, there and back and it saves time having to open and close the two fibreglass sheets too, so lots of time savings with rollers.

the actual set of gears and the frame are the easy bit its the making the two rollers 80mm in diameter with a hex pattern is the hard part

they very very rarely come up at auction any where and if the do they make almost new prices.

the thing is i can not afford or justify a £1,000 on one piece of kit as a foundation roller, i would rather buy the sheets in and spend the grand on a better extractor set up

i did once speak to a guy about haveing apair engraved for me but tthat was more than the the Th**nes version was to buy, scale of economics etc

i must warn anyone whos thinking of doing fibreglass plate the air bubbles in the hex pattern is a pig to clear out, either find a friend with a vac chamber or get someone else to do it

two last points at the time i was thinking of making foundation sheets to seel for candles ect and the main bees foundation i was not looking to sell on but to start a group foundation weekend making idea off, beer and bees wax and burgers and good times

 

[busybeephilip]

Metal rollers

After a lot of research I finally discovered how the metal rollers are made. The older versions are cast tin alloy on a steel tube or solid roller depending on the size needed. The other method is to cut the pattern on a lathe with the tin alloy roller being pre-prepared in advance by casting. The roller is centred , indexed and a special jig used to cut the cell bases and sides

Small rollers can be cast but gravity can be a problem if the mold has any flexibility, also bubbles will ruin the cast. The tricky bit is getting a -ve casting that is perfectly straight and centering the roller.