Author Topic: makeing foundation (Read 4462 times)

fat/beeman · « **on:** January 24, 2011, 10:19:45 pm »

I have my own wax mill and recycle all my own chemical free wax into sheets of nice foundation. its not hard to do. I make same size all way thru the hives. I run 4.9 and have since 1989
Don

Jim134 · « **Reply #1 on:** January 24, 2011, 10:34:09 pm »

Don .......
You can not be chemical free in the USA but you can be treatment free.

BEE HAPPY Jim 134 :)+

deknow · « **Reply #2 on:** January 24, 2011, 10:57:03 pm »

Hi Don,

We were very impressed with your foundation making setup. We've worked with a couple of other beekeepers making foundation with their setups, and yours in unique in that you dip the board horizontally. On the one hand, each dip only yields one sheet of wax, but your water bath strips the wax off the board.

With the vertical setups we've used, you get a sheet for each side of the board (or boards...Kirk Webster uses 3 boards ganged together), but it is time consuming to trim them off.

I didn't take any pics of your setup, but I have good stills and video of both Kirk and Dee's setup that I will get posted one of these days :)

Hope things are well with you,

deknow

Acebird · « **Reply #3 on:** February 13, 2011, 12:27:01 pm »

Don, what do you use for the mold? The silicone molds I found so far are quite expensive.

Would you have a video of this process.

fat/beeman · « **Reply #4 on:** February 13, 2011, 08:29:09 pm »

thanks deknow
I have a wax mill so you can make thick or thin sheets.by dipping in warm wax then running thru a embosser. I sell those machines.
Don
PM for more info(edit by buzzbee)

Acebird · « **Reply #5 on:** February 14, 2011, 08:48:02 am »

Is that with the die or tooling? Are you making the machines or just reselling them?

fat/beeman · « **Reply #6 on:** February 14, 2011, 06:36:00 pm »

they are a actual metal mill I have build locally. there adjustable.
Don

WPG · « **Reply #7 on:** February 15, 2011, 08:01:04 pm »

I guess you can't advertise your product :(, but I'm really curious what the different sizes look like.

Jim134 · « **Reply #8 on:** February 15, 2011, 08:40:07 pm »

Quote from: WPG on February 15, 2011, 08:01:04 pm

I guess you can't advertise your product :(, but I'm really curious what the different sizes look like.

Walter T. Kelley sell them all so look at pg.48 in 2011 catalog

http://kelleybees.com/CMS/CMSPage.aspx?redirect=n-3-c616fab0-127b-4469-8163-47e2c24f6f86

BEE HAPPY Jim 134 :)

Acebird · « **Reply #9 on:** February 15, 2011, 09:27:52 pm »

It is hard to tell the physical size of these rollers but why would there be two prices for something that appears to be equal?

WPG · « **Reply #10 on:** February 16, 2011, 12:00:38 am »

I thought the ones FatBeeman was having made might look different.
I like to see the little details.

Speaking of details A-bird.

Look closely at the photo of the roller mills.
The one in front is the embossing mill, the shiney one in back is the sheet mill or pre-roller. It's like a sheet metal roller, it's smooth and alot cheaper to make than the embossing roller.

Acebird · « **Reply #11 on:** February 16, 2011, 09:52:55 am »

Quote

The one in front is the embossing mill, the shiney one in back is the sheet mill or pre-roller. It's like a sheet metal roller, it's smooth and alot cheaper to make than the embossing roller.

They show the same photo with two prices $2500 and $1300. So do you get just the embossing die for 2500 or both. If it is one or the other it suggest the embossing dies are 1200 a set.

I have built a lot of rotary die stations in the past so I was just wondering.

fat/beeman · « **Reply #12 on:** February 17, 2011, 10:24:37 pm »

acebird
if you can make roller or mills for me I would be interested in several. the man making mine is slow to deliver and if you can beat the price might be interested in maybe 10
Don

beemaster · « **Reply #13 on:** February 17, 2011, 10:34:54 pm »

DON:

Your advertising STOPS NOW - I know you are thick headed, but you have been told too many times. I (we) appreciate your experience and knowledge but you need to stop the selling in every post you do here. This is the last warning. We see any more prices for tools, equipment, bees, classes and instructions or anything from you - your account will be terminated on the spot. Please understand, enough is enough.

deknow · « **Reply #14 on:** February 18, 2011, 01:17:08 am »

...as I said, I don't have any photos of Don's unique method. I just uploaded a bunch of stills from both Kirk Webster and Dee Lusby's setups that should be instructive. The mill closeups are from Dee's 4.9mm mill, which has fairly high cell walls (the hexagonal "valleys" between the protrusions on the mill).
The gallery is here (Kirk is first, but other than that it's not in order yet, but I will sequence it and add captions eventually...I also have video footage of both setups):
https://picasaweb.google.com/Dean.Ramona/FoundationMakingAndMills
also some from Dee at this gallery:
https://picasaweb.google.com/Dean.Ramona/Uploadconferencephotos

deknow

Acebird · « **Reply #15 on:** February 18, 2011, 10:46:27 am »

Quote

We see any more prices for tools

In all fairness I posted the prices from the link of the photo that Jim posted. I don't think he should be reprimanded for something I did.

deknow, thanks for the photos.

On Kirk's equipment he has a PVC troth on top of the embossing station. Is that for a soapy release or some other purpose?

Dee's equipment looks a little small in diameter. How critical is it that the thickness of the foundation remains constant? With Dee's equipment I would expect the foundation to be a little thicker in the center of the rolls due to bending.

I suspect that both of these operations are small time? The big operations must have this all in a line with motor driven embossing machines and die cutters trimming the waste and sheeting it off from a roll.

BlueBee · « **Reply #16 on:** February 18, 2011, 11:05:53 am »

Ace, without talking about prices, a person, or a product, how does a manufacturer make an embossing die? I have no experience with such things and don’t plan to make or use such a thing. I’m just curious how they would be made. I like those TV shows like "How it's made" after all :) I’m curious by nature. Do you make a mold with a CNC and than die cast into the mold to get the embossing?

Acebird · « **Reply #17 on:** February 18, 2011, 11:34:38 am »

There are two methods that I know of. Both are specialized machines costing in the 100,000 dollar range.

One is CNC where you mill away the material from a solid roll (usually) to get the impression you want. In the case of dies they would be heat treated to harden the die surface. I am not sure if the embossing rolls in the photos are hardened or not.

The second process is EDM (electronic discharge machine). In this case you mill the reverse impression into an electrode (some form of carbon). The only one I have seen is in plate form. After the electrode is made it is put into this specialized EDM machine that will pass the plate under a solid roll that turns at the surface speed of the plate back and forth. The electronic discharge (like a spark plug) will erode the metal away in very tiny increments.

I can see where you could use a standard EDM machine to make these embossers where the electrode is just one cell but it would take a heck of a long time. If it took 5 or 10 minutes to burn one cell you can get a feel for how long it would take to make one die. No matter what process is used the cost is per cell so a large diameter roll is much more than a smaller roll by a factor of pi/in dia (a little over 3).

deknow · « **Reply #18 on:** February 19, 2011, 01:37:50 pm »

foundation mills predate cnc _and_ edm. i've not heard of anyone using either method to make foundation mills (cnc is how i would approach things today....you would burn through a lot of electrodes trying to do this with edm).

but, alas, both Kirk and Dee are commercial, so I can't imagine that you would be interested in how they approach things.

deknow

hardwood · « **Reply #19 on:** February 19, 2011, 10:14:31 pm »

:lau: