Modern wet grinder
May 1st, 2011
No comments
When I went to Kanchipuram to visit Ekambareswarar, I came across this shop where I’d stopped by to have some tea. Though the tea tasted like neemcake soaked in hot water, I was intrigued to find that the gentleman in picture was preparing rice batter in a machine, that is typically used for dry grinding. During my schooling days, I had been to flour mills several times to grind rice, wheat, chilly powder, etc. There I used to observe how those grinding machines indeed work to grind the items quickly.
Not withstanding my curiousity, I went and asked the gentleman about the machine that he was using to make rice batter. He said, such machines are available in use for quite some time, about 8 years. But I have never seen this type of wet grinder before. He said, these machines are quick and can produce batter that is very fine, unlike the traditional stone type wet grinders. With him permission, I clicked this photo.
For the uneducated people, here is how the dry grinder work. The machine’s main component is a pair of gear like perforated steel plates, where one is rotated by a heavy 3 phase motor and the other is stationary. The plates operate very much like a clutch plate in an automobile. The distance between the plates is controlled by a wheel. Upon rotating it clockwise, the stationary plate gets closer to the rotating plate and vice versa. The material to be ground, is feed through these plates where they are broken into smaller pieces. Upon 2-3 iteration of grinding, the material can be ground to whatever finer requirement is by keeping the plates closer to each other.
Although, the above wet grinder is quick and capable of finer batter, I am wondering how it should be cleaner. The process to be messy unlike the easy cleaning process of the stoned wet grinder. May be, that’s the reason for the unpopularity of this wonderful machinery!
batter, clutch, dry grinding, gears, grinder, kanchipuram, motor, plates, rice, temple, wet grinder
I continued by search in the street and ended at “Switchgears India”, 149/2 Thambu Chetty Street, Chennai 1 and enquired about timer controllers. He immediately showed me a product which he claimed to be useful for industrial timed switching purposes. The guy should be Rajesh Bhandari (9840133670). He showed me the product named “Frontier Timer TM-619H-2″, which had 8 On and Off timers. There was another engineer who was sitting there helped me in configuring the timer. When I tried setting the times, I found it very versatile and immediately useful. They priced this product at Rs 600 without bill or warranty. The shopkeeper promised that the product is doing well and he had sold over 1000 pieces. This product also comes with an internal battery for keeping up with the LCD display and clock feature.