help with home made plucker

[belibutn]

Any way that I could slow that motor down, then? We were thinking about rewiring the plug to a switch, and adding a rheostat. That should make the motor turn slower, right?

 

[eggonomist]

Why add a switch if your going to add a rheostat. The rheostat will divide the voltage down to 0 making it just like a dimmer switch. I would just add that and see what you can do with it. A simple way of measuring your speed would be the flying magnet trigger sensor found in nearly all bike shops sold as a speedo. If you know the speed of a set size wheel, you can work out the RPM's. You can also use this handy bit of kit for many other projects.

 

[jvls1942]

I am guessing that shorter bungies and many more of them would work better than those long fingers.. I have 2 drum type commercial pluckers.. they run at about 250 rpm.. and the plucker with more densly spaced fingers works much better and smoother.. the sides of the fingers do not even touch the chicken.. the tips of the fingers do the work.. so the more tips, the better.. I can pluck a chicken in 20 seconds, easily..

you hold the bird so that the fingers are pulling from the tail toward the head..

and that guy who said to have the top of the wheel spinning toward the operator must have liked to wear feathers..

I can show you how to build a drum type plucker if you are interested.. let me know..

I am just about finished building a whizbag type (modified) plucker.. No welding involved and my feather plate is within 1/32 " of true round..

but that is another subject..

......jiminwisc.......

 

[belibutn]

OK, all. I removed half the fingers and held the chicken so that they were pulling against the grain as it were. it worked fantastic. was done in a very short amount of time, and my back porch looked like a pillow blew up on it.

thanks for all the advice!