DIY juicer

Using kitchen appliances to prepare delicious food does not always evoke positive emotions. Preparing juices for the winter period requires special reliability of the selected juicer model. The high cost of high-quality equipment often makes it inaccessible. Making a reliable juicer with your own hands will solve the issue of providing your own household with reliable equipment for preparing vitamins.

Principle of operation

Based on their design features, there are two types of juicers:

• centrifugal;
• screw

The principle of operation of the former is that centrifugal force at high speeds separates the juice from the pulp. At the same time, the engine and drum heat up, which contributes to the oxidation of the juice, the loss of vitamins and beneficial microelements during extraction.

Auger juicers operate at low speeds, which facilitates squeezing juice in a “gentle” mode without heating while preserving all the beneficial ingredients of the resulting mass.

ATTENTION! It has been established that the excess of vitamins during screw extraction is 6 times compared to centrifugal extraction!

Both methods are used both on an industrial scale and in everyday life. When purchasing a juicer, the consumer often does not think about the method for separating juice from vegetables and fruits. Hand-made production allows you to carefully study the specifics of spinning and the constructive method of operation of the equipment.

Do-it-yourself juicer from an activator-type washing machine

To make it yourself, you need to find an unnecessary washing machine in which it was not the drum that rotated, as in modern designs, but a shaft with plastic or metal blades for mixing the laundry. It is the use of the activator principle of operation of used equipment that will make it possible to build the required unit for squeezing juice with high productivity.

The phased execution of the work will look like this:

1. First of all, it is necessary to disassemble the laundry mixing mechanism: remove the activator and the drive shaft.
2. Prepare a shaft with three or more knives for installation in the regular place of the machine.
3. After this, thoroughly wash the inside surface of the machine and close the drain hole.
4. A mesh with holes with a diameter of 1.5 mm is made from aluminum or other stainless material. It is placed inside the centrifuge and rigidly attached to the inner surface. The shaft is placed inside the centrifuge, the entire structure is inserted into the standard place of the machine and tightened tightly.
5. The time relay, which previously served as a switch, is replaced with a toggle switch to control the shaft drive.
6. Turn on the machine and load the internal cavity of the centrifugal device. To extract juice using this homemade design, there is no need to pre-cut apples.
7. When adding a few apples at a time, you need to make sure that the surface of the shaft with knives is not covered with apple pulp. As the inside of the centrifugal mechanism fills with waste, the unit is stopped and the internal cavity of the centrifuge is cleaned. Then, put everything back in place and continue squeezing the juice.

ATTENTION! At the discretion of the manufacturer, the housing of the centrifugal mechanism can be solid and then the juice will be collected inside the centrifuge. Draining the resulting juice will not be easy, since you will have to tilt the entire unit.

The resulting juicer design will be able to process a large number of apples. There is no need to pre-cut the fruits, since the knives located on the shaft will cope with this function perfectly. A big inconvenience of using this design is the need for frequent disassembly of the shaft to completely clean the internal cavity of the centrifugal mechanism. When cleaning without disassembling the shaft, you may be injured by the sharp edges of the cutting knives.

IMPORTANT! In order to avoid cutting yourself when servicing the centrifugal mechanism, use metal devices pre-made for these purposes.

It is recommended to pass the juice obtained by squeezing through cheesecloth after it has stood for some time.

Homemade juicer from a horizontal loading washing machine

Having an old, non-working automatic washing machine allows you to make a centrifugal juicer with little effort. The user of household appliances is aware of the various operating modes of the machine when performing tasks when washing and spinning clothes. It is the latter function, or rather, its restoration that will now allow you to squeeze out juice from fruits and vegetables, rather than squeezing out laundry. To implement this plan it is necessary:

1. Make sure the drum is intact and the electric motor is working properly.
2. Disassemble the machine, remove the drum, wash, clean all internal surfaces of the unit, especially the rubber sealing elements. If necessary, clean rusty surfaces and scale with sandpaper.
3. Using a tester, determine whether the electric motor can operate in spin mode, and if a tester is not available, find the wire for direct activation of the motor at maximum speed. Install a switch in the open circuit found.
4. Remove the filter and drain pump. Replace the drain hose with a new one or ideally clean the old one. The drain should be equipped with a ball valve to regulate and control the flow of juice.
5. Close, rivet, and weld all channels and holes inside the machine that are not needed for draining juice, except for the water supply hole (it is used for washing equipment after spinning). Dismantle the heating element. Clean the sealed cavities and check for tightness.
6. Place the drum in its original place, secure it and tilt the machine so that the horizontal loading cover is at the top.
7. To check the functionality and tightness of sealing of all cavities inside the body, water is forced into the machine and left for 10–15 minutes, after closing the drain valve. If there are no leaks, the unit is turned on and the drain valve is opened.

ATTENTION! The presence of small leaks during inspection is not a reason for mandatory repair. By weighing the importance of the location of the leak, the user himself determines the need to repair the detected problem.

After checking, the unit can be loaded with fruit, squeezed out the juice and preserved for the winter.

The description of the conversion of one household unit into another is made using the frame of a washing machine. Most craftsmen, when converting a washing machine into a juicer, do not use the housing of household appliances for alterations.This is due to the bulkiness and large number of unnecessary parts of the rectangular design of washing equipment and the smaller number of sealed cavities when using a drum and its casing. The principle of alteration and spin operation is important.

REFERENCE! Not all automatic washing machines have a convenient drum casing for conversion into a juicer.

Using the body of an automatic machine is inconvenient due to the presence of a cover, which is replaced with a metal one during modifications. It is made of stainless steel or aluminum, with a round cutout in the middle, for loading without stopping the equipment. When laying fruit, it is convenient to use a pipe, through the hole of which the apples are fed into the lower part of the operating unit. The variety of design features for converting a washing machine into a juicer is limited by the user’s imagination.

How to make a manual apple juicer

Since ancient times, our ancestors used a manual mechanical press to squeeze juice out of fruits. Simplicity of design and ease of use place it among the most reliable and effective devices for preparing vitamins.

The principle of operation of a juice press is that the fruit is placed in an immobilized container, the walls of which have holes for the exit of the squeezed liquid. After loading the apples, a piston, the area of ​​which corresponds to the cross-section of the container, presses on them. Under the influence of pressure, the fruit spreads, and the juice flows through the holes into a tray or other device for collecting liquid.

The force required to crush apples is very large. Therefore, for effective spinning, a lever system, a screw rod, a jack or hydraulics are used.The manufacture of a simple mechanical press includes the following stages of work:

1. You need to cut a wide strip from a sheet of stainless steel, which will become the body of the container. Then drill holes evenly over the entire area of ​​the cut material.
2. Build a cylinder from a perforated strip, the height of which will be several times greater than the diameter. Weld the joint of the round container.
3. For ease of use of the press, a casing for a perforated container is made from the same stainless steel, the diameter of which will be 3–7 cm larger than the first one.
4. The lower parts of the container and casing are welded with round stainless steel lids with a hole in the middle for fastening together. A hole is immediately made in the lower cavity of the casing to drain the juice, if the casing is not used as a container for collecting liquid.
5. Now you need to make the support frame. For this purpose, metal profile pipes of rectangular cross-section are used. First, the support is welded in the form of a stable square, and then the frame to which the piston rod will be attached is welded to the support.
6. In the center of the upper beam, a hole larger than the diameter of the rod is drilled and a threaded nut is welded.
7. Before installing the rod, select the piston and attach it to the bottom of the threaded shaft. The piston is made of wood, metal or plastic. The main thing is that it can withstand the force of the rod. To do this, wooden or plastic material is protected with a metal plate.
8. The perforated container together with the casing is placed on a support and secured. Check the accuracy of the coincidence of the piston with the container. If inaccuracies are found, they are eliminated.

IMPORTANT! The diameter of the piston is made 2–3 mm smaller than the size of the press container, and the rod is placed clearly in its center.The displacement of the rod will not allow the large force to be evenly distributed over the entire pressure area.

The press is ready for work. Loading, spinning, and unloading waste takes a lot of time. But the quality of pressing with such a press will be the best compared to other methods. To speed up the process, an electric motor with a reduction gear or a hydraulic jack is used as a drive.

Making a juicer with your own hands will require some effort and time. These costs are compensated by positive emotions when drinking juices at any time of the year.