How we crush fresh frozen- major upgrade

Hash and Stuff Pre/Post-Processing
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Hello,
I’ve been lurking for a while, but this is the first time I’ve had something worthy of posting. I am a lab tech in a hydrocarbon lab that specializes in fresh frozen. Since our upgrades, our throughput has gone up significantly to between 75-120lbs a day. Before, we were using mallets to crush vaccum bags of -90 c cryo’d product. The increased volume sent us looking for a solution, and this is what we came up with. I haven’t seen this mentioned here before, so I am sharing. It’s essentially a pneumatic rubber mallet:
Bench Sand Rammer-full speed
Bench Sand Rammer- Slow Mo

This is a chicago pneumatic “bench sand rammer” (model#CHP-CP0200B18) used in metal foundries to ram sand molds. Price is about $500 for the tool and accessories. It comes with a small rubber striking foot, about 2 inches, and we added an old mallet head for increased surface area.

Pros:

  1. a lot less physically strenuous.
  2. Much faster, meaning we can crush more at once and keep it out of the freezers for less time. This helps us because we are stretching out cryo capacities to the max right now.
  3. Overall, you can get a better crush and consistency due to not being fatigued.

Cons:

  1. This tool is air hungry, and you’ll need a significant compressor. I would consider how the draw would affect anything in the booth if they were being used simultaneously.
  2. You have to play with the air pressure to find the sweet spot. Too high, and you’ll start to rip bags.
  3. The rapid striking seems to cause a little more pressure/friction heat, and you have to be mindful of minor thawing/product wetting and sticking to the bag.
  4. This has safety concerns like any powertool. Watch your fingers and point it away from you when you set it down. To quote my coworker, “Oh, boy! You almost thumped your jewels.”

Overall, my verdict after a week is that I’d buy this with my paycheck if work refused. It cuts the terribleness of crushing/socking by at least half.

I hope this saves someones elbows.

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holy fuck that’s awesome lol. would a hammer drill with a flat plate welded to the end of a bit work? seems like the same operation but cheaper. i made one for compacting rammed earth a while back

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Just as I started bitching about packing. You come to the rescue.

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As long as it has a hammer only setting for chipping bits. Probably don’t want it rotating while it’s pounding.

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lol yea it has a hammer setting. definitely won’t work if it rotates at all

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I need to get one.

Edit:

This thing only takes 14cfm? My venturi is like 80-90. I can easily connect this with my current air compressor

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It’s a straight stroke piston. It might have 1/8 of a turn as it strokes, but it doesn’t rotate. We looked at a variety of hammer/chipping drill type rigs meant for masonry, but they all do make full rotations, which would be a problem. This is a very specialized tool meant for packing sand into molds. It is very much just a rubber mallet motion. If it turned, it would burrow into the sand. This tool doesn’t rip bags worse than a mallet, it’s just easier to get carried away.

Are you sure you are talking 80-90 cfm and not psi? Cfm is the volume of air it takes to run continuously. PSI is the pressure to operate. 80-90 cfm would be enormous. 80-90 PSi is pretty standard pressure ranges. We use this tool in the 40-60psi range.

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You are correct, I remembered the technical information wrong. My venturi needs 80psi @ 4.8 cfm. My bad.

Coffee wasn’t fully activated at the time

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Milwaukee makes a couple drills with a hammer only setting that doesn’t rotate. I have one, but never thought of using it for tube packing really.

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With that high of a cfm, that needs to be a pretty tough compressor, right?

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Yeah, 4.8 cfm is about the max of most oil less consumer grade compressors. (the loud compressors)

But if you have a oil compressor (the kind with a belt diven motor and separate pump) It should be rated for a bit more and should do fine handling a 5cfm load and will be much quieter.

Obviously this is a rough suggestion, but usually its a quick way to rule out a lower grade compressor. Check the specs, cfm will almost always be listed clearly on the unit.

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I spent a number of years in the compressor industry but dont really focus on them anymore. That said, I am always happy to share knowledge

There are a couple different compressors out there that can be oil less or oil lubricated. The most common are reciprocating and rotary screw. Reciprocating (recip) are what you typically see at home depot on top of tanks. They are also available in more industrial packages and can get quite big. Rotary screw compressors start at 5 HP and can get very big. A good rule of thumb for compressors is 4 CFM per 1 HP. The primary difference between recip and screw compressors is that recip are for intermittent duty and screw compressors are for constant duty.

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Wish I would have known about this before I jacked my elbow all up and got hurt.

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I didn’t want to post a new thread so I thought I’d resurrect this one. Thank you @Listen_Up_Sonny for posting this!

We tried these sand rammers and it is 100% better than what we were doing.

Full disclosure, we have a pretty big remote industrial scroll compressor for our shop so we don’t have any lack of air.

But damn, the smallest rammer works tons better than a bat, mallet, etc. No need to worry about “bricked” frozen not smashing up. It busts right through it.

Operator fatigue is still a thing, but it’s much better than it was.

We got ours from John Purdy at Industrial Tool in Atlas, MI

If anyone is interested, email him jp@jpindustrialtool.com or call 810-479-5667. Tell him Dan sent you and you need to smash a bunch of frozen weed, he’ll know what you’re talking about.

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Awesome! Glad it’s working for you. Yes, compressor capacity is the crux.

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So it seems that we’ve exhausted our capacity to smash by hand or with an assisting device like a sand rammer

To be frank, hammers, bats, handheld sand rammers, etc are inadequate for large throughput.

Bricking bud in the field does make stacking, storage, palletizing, etc much easier but it screws up the smashing process.

What’s a suitable solution for this?

We’re looking at frozen meat pre-breakers, ice block crushers, among other things.

Anyone figure out an easier way to smash bricks at scale?

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Are they turning into bricks because they’re being vacuumed down so tight?

Can you work with your suppliers to remedy this issue?

I know you said it makes things easier to stack and store but it seems like that advantage is outweighed by this smashing issue.

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I’d try a plastic shredder in the walk in freezer. @Lincoln20XX built one based on the open source precious plastics version. @thesk8nmidget has a commercial one that I believe was useful when processing hemp. neither used it on frozen material, but chances are it will actually work BETTER with frozen material.

there is the possibility that it will open too many cells. only way to know is to give it a whirl.

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OR: go all Tom Sawyer on it…have the public PAY to beat your weed up with bats as an outlet for their aggression.

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I’d say that if they are getting bricks, that is from over vaccing and they should fix the root issue. But, even properly handled FF gets arduous to crush and the rammer helps. I’m always looking for better/faster options…we’ve outgrown the rammer to a degree, also…The two that I’d like to try are a conical grinder type deal in a freezer or a a modified power hammer like they use in metalsmitihing. I’m thinking modify it with a large metal work surface and a larger striking plate.

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