mill rollers

[jbs]

Hi everyone,
Our grain samples, before the auger, are showing too high a percentage of whole kernels and flour. We have a Peerless two roller mill. My questions are:

If worn rollers are the problem, will it be obvious when I look at them?

If the problem is unparallel rollers, how far out of whack do they have to be to create a problem?

As always, Thank you everyone for your great responses.
Jason

[gitchegumee]

You will not notice any wear or out-of-parallel condition by visual inspection. Buy a cheap set of feeler gauges and measure the gap directly. The usual roll setting on a 2 roller mill is only 1.15 mm. Very narrow! Alternatively, you could do a full ASBC or EBC mill analysis with a set of 5 or 6 screens. You should not have whole kernels coming out of the mill. Good luck!

[velez03]

I am having a similar problem. I contacted the manufacturer (Robix in Hungary) for an estimate for new rollers, based on their recommendation, and have yet to hear back from them, does anyone know of another source for new rollers? are these parts proprietary? any info, as always, is greatly apprecieated.

Cheers
Pete

[Moonlight]

If your rollers are bad, take them to a machine shop for remachining.
If just the bearings are shot, you will get unpredictable wobble or gap distortion. This would be an even cheaper fix. Have you been using a (food grade) grease gun on the bearings regularly? If your mill has a 3 phase motor, you could swap two wires to reverse the motor/mill direction and use a feeler gauge to see if the gap changes between still and powered. (The feeler gauge and perhaps your fingers would be sucked into the rollers with normal mill rotation.) Use extreme caution! The gap can also open or distort when malt forces the rollers apart vs. when the rollers are spinning freely. Bearings are cheap and more likely the cause of your problems than the rollers.
If your rollers are not parallel, the mounting alignment is wrong. If you watch the rollers and they wow up and down predictably, THAT is the sign of rollers that need to be remachined.
Ever trued a bicycle wheel?... it's like that.

[gitchegumee]

Instead of a feeler gauge on a live set of rolls (might feel more than you want), run a length of solder through and use a micrometer measure the gap.

[Moonlight]

Damn great idea, that solder! I was trying to think of something similar!