How to make an automatic cordless rotating sieve or trommel. For basic non-automated construction guide go to Costa’s Gardening Australia video at: www.abc.net.au/gardening/fact...
Thank you for this wonderful resource! As a fellow kludgery enthusiast I was planning a similar build in my head and you have saved me a ton of guesswork and testing. I'll be sure to credit you appropriately when my neighbors invariably stick their heads out and ask "what the hell are you building now?!?". Cheers
I built a trommel last year and manually rotated it for about 4 tonnes of dirt... didnt even cross my mind to set it up with my drill in the same fashion... genius
Great idea using a drill to motorize your trommel. Much simpler than stepping down an electric motor with pulleys and belts. I don’t know what this would do to the life of your drill. Very nice. I guess you could say your wife “ inspired” you. Greetings from Maine.
Great to hear Gillian. Cordless drills with their size, power and variable speed motor can be used for many things. I used one to make syllabub when I did not have a food mixer! All the best with all your projects.
Best and simple design. I like also the proper size wheel borrow under it, that is wide and bigger in size and has leveled rim top. And the whole machine is light weight.
Thanks for the comment Dan. You are right, t is a DIY rather than commercial option. I and others have used it for several hours at a time and the drill is still going Well. If using corded always be wary of trip and electrocution hazard of trailing 240V leads in the garden. Good luck with the gardening.
This is an excellent project and easy design. I am going to try it as soon as possible. One question, can plastic garden mesh be used for this instead of wire mesh since it would be much cheaper for the smaller aperture holes?
Hello Hamza. I think that plastic mesh would work as long as it was stiff enough for the material you are sieving. For example I was recently separating large gravel from soil and this was heavy so the stiff wire was adequate. However if you were simply trying to separate sticks from fine compost, then stiff plastic mesh might be strong enough. Maybe put a shovel full of the material you want to work with onto a bit of the mesh you are thinking of using and pick it up and move it around to get an idea of whether the mesh is stiff enough or will distort under the weight of the material. Good Luck!
You probably dont care but if you are stoned like me atm you can watch pretty much all of the latest series on Instaflixxer. Been watching with my gf during the lockdown :)
very nice back yard engineered sieve, I bought a used cement mixer to pulverize leaves. I fill the mixer with leaves, toss in a few tennis ball size stones and run the mixer, this pulverizes the leaves into small pieces that I add as mulch to my garden and flower beds. you could use brick pieces, short pieces of chain, or anything that will beat the leaves into smaller pieces as the mixer turns. I would attach legs with wheels or casters to this seive so I could move it around in the garden to the place where I wanted the compost to be added. I would also use a 12v lawnmower battery and small 12v motor to spin the sieve, the battery can be kept charged by a small solar panel.
Thanks Roy Hoco. Great idea of yours for pulverising stuff. Legs would be a good addition to the sieve but I would try to make them fold so you can still use it on a wheel barrow if required. Also getting the slope right is important as this determines the speed at which material travels down the sieve tube. The height of my two wheeled barrow in the video was just right for me and I could slope it with the right sized chock under one wheel.
Very nice job, I tried reproducing this weekend. I opted for placing the drill with a short axle and wheel attached on the middle rim. When I loaded the cylinder with some wet / heavy compost, it bogged down my drill and the clutch disengaged I assume because it was too much torque. I have a ryobi impact driver/drill. Just wondering if you or anyone else experienced this. I have another drill I can try that has an adjustable clutch setting. Also considered using a "grooved" wheel on the drill and using an old innertube to go around the middle rim and groove wheel. This would keep a little tension on the cylinder pressing against the outer casters.
Thanks Scott. I have no experience with impact driver/drills. Most tools have a setting which often looks like a twist drill which switches off the clutch function. It you are using wet/heavy stuff maybe try and dry it out - even if you just put an old bit of iron or tarp over it for a few days. Also use smaller shovelfuls and go a bit slower so as not to overload the drill. Increasing the slope of the trommel might break up the material a bit more and move it through quicker. Good luck.
By chance, I did find Lauriston’s source of the wheels (Bunnings of Australia) which is prohibitive in cost to us in the United States. Part of the “secret” in making his setup work is the WIDTH of the wheels, which are only 0.6496063 inches and must be able to track inside the bicycle rim. However, within another comment, a fellow suggests training wheels. It appears that I may be able to order such training wheels through Walmart at a reasonable cost. I will be emailing one of the suppliers to get the exact width before purchasing. As for powering with a drill, I have a cordless, 18V Lithium battery-powered WARRIOR drill that cost me only $20.05 purchased from HARBOR FREIGHT which does everything that my cordless 18V Hitachi drill which cost me $150. Even if the setup destroys my $20 Warrior drill, that is less money than I currently have in my electric motor (salvaged) using a controller ($22.99) and $18 belt. Muirhead’s setup is very portable and can be disassembled and stored much more easily than can some of the other trommels featured on RU-vid. While my setup works very well, I still prefer the idea of using a cordless drill.
Thank you colimtl. Sorry about the delay. You are right - Bunnings of Australia is our main hardware retailer. The wheels I used were about three quarters the width of the inside measurements of the bicycle rims. I would think there is something similar available online. I hope you can see from the video that there was quite a bit of play on the non driving wheels. They can slide along the axle a bit so if the rims are not quite true, they still keep running in the “track”. The fixed “driving” wheels cannot have such play but I have not had the thing jump off track yet. If you try to build the sifter so the rims are parallel there should not be too much trouble. Good luck. Lauriston
KISS Keep It Stupidly Simple. Fair play no washing machine motor pulley and belt, just a power drill. Have a cord drill I have discarded that now will have a new purpose :)
Well said Stephen. The screen in the video has apertures of about 20mmx10mm but since then I needed a finer screen to screen pebbles out of some good top soil and I just inserted a bit of mesh with 5mmx5mm inside the existing screen and again secured with zip ties. Works well. Thanks for pointing that out. I suggest starting with the bigger screen which will be made of more robust wire which will be able to support an finer screen that might be used later.
Hello Paolo. Thank you. I was able to process about one tonne or one cubic metre of soil on one battery charge, so maybe one hour of hard work on one battery charge. I have three batteries charging so I could go all day. Sadly my body does not have any spare batteries so I do other more gentle jobs in between. Happy gardening.
Hello Clive Francis. See my reply to Aaron. As long as the sifter runs fairly freely and is not filled too full at any one time, I think it would take a very long time to burn the drill out - those drills are very tough.
Great idea using a trill on the wheel, ... I might to the same with an old corded drill I've got, as I don't want to inadvertently burn out my good cordless one, but otherwise, thanks.
Thanks Aaron Wadzinski. I recommend cordless. Cords are easy to trip on and limit how far from power you can operate and introduce a high voltage shock risk as well. If you use a corded drill please be very careful to run the cord safely. The cordless drills are incredibly robust. I have used mine really hard and it has not stopped yet after several years. I have drilled post holes in hard ground with a 40mm (11/2 inch) auger with it, left it out in the rain etc. It will not die! I can sieve about half a cubic metre (2/3 cubic yard) of soil on one charge of a 1.5 Ah battery.
Hello Kevin. Sorry I have been out of action for a while! I have not had any soil analysis done but I guess the soil might be quite high in iron which may cause the red colour. Like a lot of Australian soils, it is very old and compacted and the topsoil is fairly thin and delicate. It needs a lot of organic matter, compost etc. but seems to grow things quite well especially citrus. Happy gardening!
Can you tell me about the drive wheels? I'm guessing you are not in the US. Can you say what kind of wheels they are and where to find them? Can you describe their makeup and dimensions? Thanks
Hello Sumnerbrent. I am in Australia. We have a big hardware chain called Bunnings where I buy most of my bits and pieces. The wheels appear to be nylon with fairly grippy rubber tyres and there is enough of a tube on the axle to be able to drill a small hole so you can put a split pin or similar to fix the wheels to the axle. As per the video the two wheels on the long shaft are fixed to the axle so when the drill turns the axle the wheels turn. The other two wheels are free running. Here is a link so you can see what the wheels look like www.bunnings.com.au/ambassador-100mm-white-plastic-centre-wheel-and-rubber-tyre_p3942885 I am sure you will be able to find something similar - obviously you have to match the wheel hole to the diameter of whatever you are using for the axles. I think I used 10mm aluminium (about 3/8 inch aluminum) tube but it was fairly delicate and would be easy to bend if it gets knocked around. Stainless steel or gal. rod might be more robust.
@@lauristonmuirhead1210 Thanks for your reply! Your project was inspirational! I built a similar unit over the last few weeks based on yours. I ended up finding replacement training wheels on Amazon that seem to be about a match for what you used on yours. I couldn't find an aluminum rod in the correct length so I settled for steel 5/16th. My trammel is 4 feet in length and I found I didn't need the center rim. The wood stringers seem to carry the load fine. I used wood from an old pallet for the frame as in the original video. This unit is working great! I'll send you a picture. Thanks for sharing your project.
Outstanding! This is what I’m trying to build. Hopefully I’ll post my creation when I’m done. My problem is adhearing the wheels to the axle. I read your response below on drilling a hole through the castor, but I don’t see how your drill was able to fit the drill that close to the tire. Excellent engineering sir!
I definitely would put in a couple of bearings, a few bushings and a proper motor. Good grief, those hobbyists drills don't last very long using them for drills, let alone a motor.
Hello jenky1044. There are definitely good and bad cordless drills. I have found the Ryobi products from Bunnings in Australia to be extremely good value for money (I do not get any sponsorship from them). It is not very clear in the video but I can sift nearly a tonne of dirt on one charge of the battery. If you are sensible about how much load you put on the trommel it should last a long time. I have various Ryobi tools and have treated them pretty harshly, especially the drill - I built a fence a while back drilling many 600mm deep holes in hard dirt with a 50mm auger etc. See my fire fence video. In five years the drill has not died yet. I agree it is not “busy tradesperson” standard but at the price I don’t expect that. Also agree bearings etc. good for professionals but watch out for that cord - always a trip and electrocution hazard. Even the contractors are now going cordless electric. Have a look at the Stihl range. Good luck.
Hello Java OpenSource. Certainly that could work but would add a lot of complexity. I have a solar roof top system and use all my gardening tools etc. during the day so the batteries are charged almost exclusively by solar. If you have not got a roof top solar system, I strongly recommend having a good quality system installed. Good for you (save money in the long run) and good for the planet!
Hello Otrotland. You can certainly use a corded electric drill if you are close enough to mains power. The advantage of the cordless drill is that you don’t have to be near mains power and you don’t have dangerous leads lying around acting as trip hazards etc. Good luck with your projects.
I can see a use for some sorting, but NEVER for putting your existing garden soil through... you’re absolutely destroying/killing whatever fungal growth and microbial life you may have grown over the season. This is a No-Till gardeners worst nightmare. Please watch Kiss the Ground on Netflix.
You are right Garth that fungal hyphae will be broken up but fungal spores and microbes are microscopic and very tough and if you look after your soils they should regrow pretty quickly. Thank you for the Kiss the Ground recommendation - wonderful.
@@lauristonmuirhead1210 you might also enjoy many RU-vid talks by Dr. Elaine Ingham, founder of the Soil Food Web School, Dr. Christine Jones, soil microbiologist, and farmer Gabe Brown, successful Regenerative Ag practitioner.
