First Backyard Test Of My Modified Wal-Banker

[elbowgrease]

Based on Wals ever popular Wal-Banker, I've put together this machine. In the video its only running off a garden hose, but its enough to get an idea of how it will eventually work.

Still need to:
1) Work out some legs
2) Work out a mechanism to make the hopper tilt adjustable
3) Make a few more holes in the spray bars to get more spread, then glue all the bits for the spray bars together.
4) Get a bit of aluminium angle folded up to hold down the front of the matting (the matting and crate has been cut and fitted but not shown in the test run video)
5) Source a piece of expanded mesh, cut and fit.

Hoping to have this ready to run over Christmas \ New Years!

[video=480,360]http://youtu.be/mQk0YFUCiqE[/video]

 

[HeadsUp]

yup

little more spread on the water spray as you already identified . tick

how about the grizzly , is there a way to lift it out easily and bang it on something to remove any little rocks jammed into it ?

try it the way it is first but maybe also experiment with putting plain flat sheet in the first 200 mm to help with wetting down gravel and clays before it moves lower over the grizzly

i do mine 4 - 5 times a day sometimes but i have mine so it slots into some little guide hooks

 

[Ag Man]

Nice looking project mate.
Did you TIG weld it together or use www.durafix.com.au ?

 

[Guest]

Nice looking project mate.
Did you TIG weld it together or use www.durafix.com.au ?

That looks like some good stuff have you used it?

 

[WalnLiz]

Be keen to see it with the internal components mate....a few tweeks here and there and to gold will end up in your jar.

cheers Wal.

 

[elbowgrease]

yup

little more spread on the water spray as you already identified . tick

how about the grizzly , is there a way to lift it out easily and bang it on something to remove any little rocks jammed into it ?

try it the way it is first but maybe also experiment with putting plain flat sheet in the first 200 mm to help with wetting down gravel and clays before it moves lower over the grizzly

i do mine 4 - 5 times a day sometimes but i have mine so it slots into some little guide hooks

Yeah, I've drawn a line for a second row of holes, it should give a pretty good coverage of spray with a bit of luck. I literally just finished drilling the holes jammed it all together and gave it a run just to see how it would run.

The grizzly is fully removable, its made out of 10mm square ally rod. There were a couple of reasons for that, firstly if it wears out quickly than its easily replaceable without damaging the rest of the hopper, and secondly if I'm working a different area I can always have the option to make a grizzly to suit the conditions which can be quickly changed over. I went with square rod as opposed to round rod because I've found the round stuff seems to have rocks jam in the taper, square stuff still has this problem but I feel just not as much.

Lastly in regards to the grizzly and hopper it's fully adjustable from horizontal to a reasonable amount of tilt. That was done so if the material needs a bit more time to wash I can just level it out and manually clean it (like with the original wal-banker design)

 

[elbowgrease]

Nice looking project mate.
Did you TIG weld it together or use www.durafix.com.au ?

All TIG welded. Got a few mates in the engineering trade who have helped with the welding and folding work. Nice and rigid and strong and leak free, no pop rivets to come loose or leak!

 

[elbowgrease]

Nice looking project mate.
Did you TIG weld it together or use www.durafix.com.au ?

That looks like some good stuff have you used it?

Not yet mate! Haven't even glued the spray bars together yet! Really hoping to have it "useable" between the Christmas New Years break, I don't think I'll be complete by then, but hopefully done enough to at least give it a run.

 

[elbowgrease]

Be keen to see it with the internal components mate....a few tweeks here and there and to gold will end up in your jar.

cheers Wal.

I got a bit of ally folded up to hold down the front of the mats and crate but the vertical fold wasn't tall enough, so I'm hoping to get a new bit done tomorrow or Tuesday. Not sure I'm going to be able to get my hands on the expanded mesh before then but I should still be able to test run some material through it just to get an idea of how it'll run.

 

[slowflow]

Great looking sluice, are you posting some of it in action on the creek?
I just put a screw through spray bar joints so they can be cleaned, removed and altered.

 

[PJ Gibson]

Nice job!