hotponyshoes
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I am having a go at making a cheese press, this is only for my own use so money is no object. Ie. I can use cheap, dirty, second hand parts!
I am planning in making the press part using a pneumatic ram.
After looking at some cheese recipes and talking to some commercial cheese makers pressing cheese is not as simple as I first thought.
Firstly, pressing is best done in stages, so, for example, you would first press at 1bar for 15mins. Then 2bar for 12hours then 3.5bar for 24hrs.
Secondly, the pressure used varies depending on the type of cheese you are making and the recipe normally gives this pressure in lbs for a reccomend mold size. If using another size mold then you have to convert to psi and scale up/down to suit.
So somehow I need to control the pressure being fed to the pneumatic ram. The options I have thought of so far are:
#1, Some sort of pressure sensor in the air line, some sort of controller and a contactor that feeds the compressor. Initially have no pressure in the compressor, turn it on until it reaches stage 1, start a timer, turn it on again etc.
I presume I would want some sort of pid controller to prevent the compressor constantly turning on and off and would also need to turn the compressor on during a timed interval as the cheese compresses.
#2 Leave the compressor on all the time and fit 3 regulators. Set each one to the individual stage pressures and fit solonide valves to the outputs of these. Fit nrv's to the 2 lower pressure regulators.
I would need a timer controller with multiple outputs (or 2/3 seperate timers).
In fact , to make it simple, I could use the existing regulator on the compressor for the 3rd stage, and If i just fitted one other regulator I could manually do stage 1, turn the pressure up for stage 2 then leave it and just have one timer to start stage 3 when I may well be asleep. Come back 24hrs later and stop it all manually.
#3, I have never messed about with arduino type devices and this might be a good way of trying one out. Not sure if its possible but I wonder if it could work like this?
Some sort of electronically controlled regulator? Or I use a regular regulator and attach a stepper motor to the adjuster knob?
Or could I control a valve/solonide with an arduino? Pwm maybe?
One desirable feature would be to gradually ramp up the pressure between stages, I may be able to do this manually using some sort of flow restriction on the airline but it would be nice if it was possible to vary the ramping.
Another thing that would be nice would be to program the arduino with a table of cheese types and mold sizes, add a display and some buttons so I could select the cheese type, mold size, time settings and have it work out all the maths for me!
Would welcome any input especially if there is a simple way that I am missing!
I am planning in making the press part using a pneumatic ram.
After looking at some cheese recipes and talking to some commercial cheese makers pressing cheese is not as simple as I first thought.
Firstly, pressing is best done in stages, so, for example, you would first press at 1bar for 15mins. Then 2bar for 12hours then 3.5bar for 24hrs.
Secondly, the pressure used varies depending on the type of cheese you are making and the recipe normally gives this pressure in lbs for a reccomend mold size. If using another size mold then you have to convert to psi and scale up/down to suit.
So somehow I need to control the pressure being fed to the pneumatic ram. The options I have thought of so far are:
#1, Some sort of pressure sensor in the air line, some sort of controller and a contactor that feeds the compressor. Initially have no pressure in the compressor, turn it on until it reaches stage 1, start a timer, turn it on again etc.
I presume I would want some sort of pid controller to prevent the compressor constantly turning on and off and would also need to turn the compressor on during a timed interval as the cheese compresses.
#2 Leave the compressor on all the time and fit 3 regulators. Set each one to the individual stage pressures and fit solonide valves to the outputs of these. Fit nrv's to the 2 lower pressure regulators.
I would need a timer controller with multiple outputs (or 2/3 seperate timers).
In fact , to make it simple, I could use the existing regulator on the compressor for the 3rd stage, and If i just fitted one other regulator I could manually do stage 1, turn the pressure up for stage 2 then leave it and just have one timer to start stage 3 when I may well be asleep. Come back 24hrs later and stop it all manually.
#3, I have never messed about with arduino type devices and this might be a good way of trying one out. Not sure if its possible but I wonder if it could work like this?
Some sort of electronically controlled regulator? Or I use a regular regulator and attach a stepper motor to the adjuster knob?
Or could I control a valve/solonide with an arduino? Pwm maybe?
One desirable feature would be to gradually ramp up the pressure between stages, I may be able to do this manually using some sort of flow restriction on the airline but it would be nice if it was possible to vary the ramping.
Another thing that would be nice would be to program the arduino with a table of cheese types and mold sizes, add a display and some buttons so I could select the cheese type, mold size, time settings and have it work out all the maths for me!
Would welcome any input especially if there is a simple way that I am missing!