Wooden Compressed Earth Block Press

There is a post of the forum about a $30 CEB press made using wood. It is based on the biomass briquette press put on the internet by the Legacy Foundation. That post got me thinking, why not try to construct a CEB press with the other biomass briquette design, the Peterson Press. It uses a 2 ton bottle jack.

Well, spent the weekend working on building one--sorry no pictures--and I have to say it seems a bit more trouble then it's worth.

In theory it does work, and I was able to compress a few bricks, but there are some major problems, mostly with extracting the block after compression. I also may have not had enough moisture in the mix, which caused the edges to be crumply. I should have tested a few more, but my main conclusion to abandon the design, was how long it takes to create a block. I think that efficiency should be just as important as cost when coming up with designs. Often, as is the case with the $30 CEB Press design on this forum, too much emphasis is placed on cost.

Cost is important, but should be in balance with the speed of production. That is why I think that the CEB machines, which spit out so many bricks per minute, stands on the other extreme, not only costing more, but the actual compressing of the blocks is the easy part, the time to get the soil ready is what takes time. The manual CIVNA Ram is a great design because it can be quickly filled, compressed, and extracted. But the problem with its design is it costs too much, and takes proper equipment to cut the metal, weld it together, ect.

That is why wood would be the best balance, since most of us can work with it without serious tools. There must be a way to design a wooden CEB press that is just as efficient and strong as the metal ones.

Anyone else up to design one? If so, let there be commerce between us.

If the jack, as used in the Peterson Press, is capable of 2 ton pressure (no idea how much that would be in bar), why not using 2 tubes and use a triangular shape to spread the force? I guess 2 ton is mostly used to lift a vehicle up. That would suffice to press more than 1 tube at a time?

BTW, here the guy is using a press to push the tube upwards.

http://www.approficia.org/p/peterson-press_12.html

While this one is using it the other way around, which is more practical I think.

http://www.patrickschildren.org/cooking-fuel-project/

Which one has preference and why?

Aschwin Wesselius wrote:If the jack, as used in the Peterson Press, is capable of 2 ton pressure (no idea how much that would be in bar), why not using 2 tubes and use a triangular shape to spread the force? I guess 2 ton is mostly used to lift a vehicle up. That would suffice to press more than 1 tube at a time?

BTW, here the guy is using a press to push the tube upwards.

http://www.approficia.org/p/peterson-press_12.html

While this one is using it the other way around, which is more practical I think.

http://www.patrickschildren.org/cooking-fuel-project/

Which one has preference and why?

My understanding as to using the jack on top, pushing down, is to remove it from the way of the water which is squezzed out. This is probably better for the bottle jack in the long run.

As for the idea to spread the pressure out to compress more then one tube at a time, I have already seen biomass briquette presses doing this, some as many as 16 at a time.

But what I built was a CEB press, not a briquette press. I am trying to build a wooden press to compress earth to make earth brick. Still looking for a way around the issue of having to get somebody to cut the metal, weld it together, and make sure the CIVNA Ram works.

Anyone out there who can build me a CIVNA Ram, give me a quote as this may be a better option then trying to build/ design something out of wood.

So I just built a wooden earth brick press using a scissor jack to apply force. I had to use lots of ingenuity and a ton of screws in the right places to get the wood to withstand the pressure of compaction, and still it sounds like it is gonna bust apart on every test brick. I had the bright idea of making the compaction chamber out of concrete, to be finished in a few days. Also, I would use the actual piston to be used for compaction to be the in part of the mold, to get a perfect fit. Using the wooden chamber i had a problem with tiny rocks getting between the piston and the mold. I would set anchor bolt into the concrete to anchor the top plate, legs, etc. The top plate would have 4 holes which would fit over the anchor bolts and use washers and nuts to secure it for minimal squeeze out at the top. Removal/install would be quick with drill equipped with socket adapter.