homemade egg turner ideas? anyone have any working

[encorepistol]

Well Ive about talked myself into building a cabinet style incubator but looking at the cost of a new gqf turning mechanism has me thinking twice. Even buying individual egg turner racks would run at least 40 bucks a pop and at probably 6 times I could find a good used one maybe. Has anybody come up with a good way to turn the eggs all at the same time without breaking the bank so to speak? I can build the cabinet for probably around 75 with heat and fan and thermostat wafers so if I could do it for around 150 I will do it.

 

[rebelcowboysnb]

http://cmfarm.us/eggturner.html

 

[encorepistol]

thanks for the link! only thing is I need more info

thats all kinda foreign to me. I see it working but have no idea what is needed to even accomplish it. would the little motors in the plastic egg turners work for driving the racks?

 

[rebelcowboysnb]

No it would work for a timer motor. An auger motor out of a ice despencer in a fridge might work for the main motor.

 

[encorepistol]

Been doing lots of reading and like the idea of the timer and have seen where an irrigation timer could be used with multiple station outputs to reverse the motor. The only thing I see a problem with is they output to 24 volts and the motors Ive looked at would perform well at up to 12 volts keeping the rpms low. I was even thinking that with some tinkering with the timer and some limit switches it could possibly be done fairly easy. The more I think about it the more I like this idea of doing it. Now just have to get dimmensions from our sportsman cabinet that a buddy and me partnered on and build the cabinet .

 

[abritton77]

Ive been thinking about building one myself. I saw a linear actuator sell on eBay for 10 bucks. It was off of a treadmill. I am sure that if you can come up with an actuator that works off of 120 vac you can make it move up and down with 2 $3 24 hr Christmas light timers. All you would have to do is wire up to one timer and down to the other timer. I am assuming that the actuator would have built in limit switches to make it stop in the up and down position. I am electrician and work in a mill and have used linear actuators to move things at work many times. I am sure you can build the turning part of it for 30 bucks if you can handle the electrical part and find the right actuator. I also think you can make one out of a power antenna actuator, but it would have to operate on 12 volts.

 

[encorepistol]

Thanks. Im sure there are lots of ways of doing it just gotta find the right combination of parts to use. I can figure out some of the electric but other times I dont understand everyting involved. Ive got to get the cabinet built so that the eggturner wil fit the egg racks and then figure out the timer and turner to fit. Lots of reading to do!!!

 

[abritton77]

Just did a quick search on ebay and could not find an actuator that I was interested in. The treadmill one may not have enough stroke. I may have under estimated my price estimate.

 

[encorepistol]

I found a motor and think I figured a fairly easy way to do what Im thinking. The motor will run off of 6 volts at only aroind 4 rpms. If I use a couple digital wall timers and 6 volt transformers to run the power to the motor when the timer says to then use a couple limit switches to kill the power in the up and down positions where they need to be. It sounds good in my head jusst need to write it down how I think I should do it with adding a couple switches for power. Only other real question is what about venting the incubator? I havent looked at the sportsman yet but pretty sure they have a couple holes for humidity control covered by a sliding cover. Also what is the most reliable heat source?

 

[flyweed]

why not use the motor out of a grills rotisserie..they turn very slow..and could be wired into a timer as well, or just let run continously connected to the turning mechanism of the egg trays..I think that would be super easy to create.

Dan