Vertical plunger wood splitter converts to Compressed Earth Block press

This is purely speculative at this point. I've seen a few videos on the small scale manufacture of CEBs. There are hand operated units and hydraulic ones.

Some hydraulic splitters have a plunger which pushes strait down. It would seem that these machines are one chunk of plate steel from being able to be used to compact CEBs.

One or several forms could be made which would sit on the table in place of firewood. A simple pin jig would ensure proper placement of the form so that its edges are not hit by the decending plate. Prepared dirt could be slid from a pan which sits to one side of the plunger. A block could be poured and pressed. If its too thin , add some mix and press again. The lever action machines are dead slow. Something like this is a low cost alternative.

Keep those creative juices flowing. THis sounds like a great idea for adaptive developments.

Blessings,
Max

Here's another simple adaptation of a splitter.

Stone crusher. Quite often I get paid to haul away low grade concrete, brick and tile. The load pictured below cost $25 to dump. This stuff is all soft enough to be broken up with a hammer, so a good splitter should have no trouble with it. Rather than just squishing the materials between flat plates, the plunger could have pyramid shaped teeth in order to create point loads. Granite and other hard rocks would be too difficult to process in quantity but stuff like that on my truck could be turned into useful aggregate in less time than it took me to dump and return.

Fruit press. Again, some modifications could turn a splitter into a juice extractor.

Cob extruder. If a metal box were built to receive the flat plate attached to the plunger, cob could be extruded in various profiles by screwing different heads onto the exit pipe. Straw might need to be shorter for this to work well.

Sawdust compressor. Instead of making wood pellets, we make rectangular blocks 3"x3"x12" would make nice rocket fuel. This wouldn't be stuff for the self feeder, it would just be a nice size to feed into a burn tube.

I was just looking an aluminum can crusher and thinking how to modify it for making compressed fuel briquets.

Thought the same thing about the gravity/spring operated wood splitter I saw posted here.

Dale Hodgins wrote:Sawdust compressor. Instead of making wood pellets, we make rectangular blocks 3"x3"x12" would make nice rocket fuel. This wouldn't be stuff for the self feeder, it would just be a nice size to feed into a burn tube.

It would be good conventional wood stove fuel, too.

I have thought about doing this (I have practically unlimited sawdust 10 miles down the road), but the fuel to run the machine costs more than the product would be worth for me.

Dale and R Scott : Near where I live in 'the outer' -'rondacs', there is an Intentional community that Runs its entire crop of Cider apples (and Cider Pears ) Through
an older model small 'Troy Built' Woodchipper, prior to running the apples through their press, this has been so successful for them I do not think they will ever do
it any other way !

There are lots of amazingly clean burning 'Sawdust' heaters most of which require packing around a set of 2 removable sleeves, the vertical one set above a lower
horizontal one, removing the 'sleeves' provides the lower air supply and the connecting vertical one acting much like a Het Riser, Because it is simple to build as the
simplest 5 gal Rocket Stove, and is pretty efficient, and can also use all forms of waste old as binders and additional Hydrocarbons- any one would have to work
pretty hard to build an easier or much more efficient way to burn "Sawdust ''! Just my 4 cents ! For theCraft ! BIG AL !

allen lumley wrote:Dale and R Scott : Near where I live in 'the outer' -'rondacs', there is an Intentional community that Runs its entire crop of Cider apples (and Cider Pears ) Through
an older model small 'Troy Built' Woodchipper, prior to running the apples through their press, this has been so successful for them I do not think they will ever do
it any other way !

There are lots of amazingly clean burning 'Sawdust' heaters most of which require packing around a set of 2 removable sleeves, the vertical one set above a lower
horizontal one, removing the 'sleeves' provides the lower air supply and the connecting vertical one acting much like a Het Riser, Because it is simple to build as the
simplest 5 gal Rocket Stove, and is pretty efficient, and can also use all forms of waste old as binders and additional Hydrocarbons- any one would have to work
pretty hard to build an easier or much more efficient way to burn "Sawdust ''! Just my 4 cents ! For theCraft ! BIG AL !

Al, I wasn't really looking for a way to burn sawdust. It's more of a think tank on things other than firewood that could benefit from the good squeeze that a machine like this can deliver.

Here's a better product to make from sawdust. Mix it with clay slip until it is well coated. Then press it into uniform bricks. These could be an insulated form of cob. Fire some to make insulated bricks.

Oil press too.

Dale Hodgins wrote:This is purely speculative at this point.  I've seen a few videos on the small scale manufacture of CEBs. There are hand operated units and hydraulic ones.  

Some hydraulic splitters have a plunger which pushes strait down.  It would seem that these machines are one chunk of plate steel from being able to be used to compact CEBs.

One or several forms could be made which would sit on the table in place of firewood. A simple pin jig would ensure proper placement of the form so that its edges are not hit by the decending plate. Prepared dirt could be slid from a pan which sits to one side of the plunger. A block could be poured and pressed. If its too thin , add some mix and press again. The lever action machines are dead slow. Something like this is a low cost alternative.

I imagine there’s a way to compress 8 bricks at a time with a simple attachment tool. I’m not completely sure, but I would think that compressing four bricks stacked on top of four more bricks simultaneously would make up for the time it takes to compress and retract with a wood splitter. You would need two separate molds that someone can fill while another is compressing, but you’ll still need a third person to handle the soil mixing process. I’m not sure, but I don’t imagine building four molds of four bricks is really that expensive.

Maybe building molds for larger bricks would make more sense for use in a log splitter