Fixing the apple press

After almost two falls our apple press broke, threads on it wheren't that good to begin with. The rod was ok but the nut had too weak threads. First I tried to find a suitable replacement nut but the threads where some weird size, probably imperial, so I had to change the rod too.

I used a 20 mm trapezoidal thread.

After fixing it works again.

Making apple juice

Fall, apples are getting ripe. Time make some juice.

We have several apple trees, and we know that if we just freeze slices we probably wont use them. But we do drink juice. We have tried juicers, but they tend to be meant for smaller scale, few liters maybe. Then I came across Matthias Wandel's homepage and his apple cider making page https://woodgears.ca/cider/. I copied the design somewhat and came up with this.

It's current in prototype stage, I want to make a bigger place to put the apples, preferably so large that I can just pour a whole moving box of apples there and let it crunch away. Also a better stand would be nice. The vfd in the back is just to test different speeds, I intend to replace that motor with something a bit smaller and one phase. Video of the crusher can be found here https://youtu.be/YjaJNmqus-Y

I haven't had time to build a press so I'm forced to use this store bought. It does it's job but could be better.

Today i harvested two trees, about four moving boxes full of apples, 30 liters of juice.

update: Second time, about 75 kg of apples gives about 25 litres of juice.