Heavy Duty Feed Conveyor

Heavy duty feed conveyor LIVESTOCK Feeding Equipment 13-2-9 "At 1/3 the price, I think my home-built feed conveyor-elevator will outlast 3 other conveyors and have 3 times less trouble," says Louis Wuest, Oshkosh, Wis., about the 16-ft. long feed conveyor-elevator he built to carry haylage, corn silage and grain from his silos to bunk feeders. "I fashioned the trough and chain return out of 10 by 6 by 1/4 in. I-beam, 2 1/4 by 3/16-in. angle iron, and 4 1/2 by 1/8-in. flat iron. The I-beams were laid back-to-back to form an H-beam. I then welded the flat iron pieces to the top side of the H-beam at a 45? angle out from the sides of the beam to form the feed trough. I welded the angle iron to the bottom side of the beam to form the chain return. The chains and paddles were made by a local chain supplier. The shafts, gears and bearings were all bought off-the-shelf from local suppliers. "I attached angle iron brackets to the driven end of the beam to support the bearing blocks and sprockets. The electric motor belt-drives a home-built 38-in. dia. pulley, which I used to obtain the proper chain speed and to reduce the number of parts required I made chain tighteners by slipping 1-in. sq. steel stock into square metal tubing and installing adjustment bolts. I cut into the beam on either end to install shafts and sprockets. There's a feed drop-out door at center which can be opened with a sliding plate." Wuest also built his own supplement feeder and mounted it a few feet from the base of the feed conveyor. "I cut grooves in a wringer roller from a wringer-type washing machine and mounted it in the bottom of a U-shaped metal hopper that's got an open slot in the bottom. A pulley on the end of the wringer roller is driven by a shaft off the conveyor chain drive to evenly apply supplement to feed. "We built our own feed elevator' be-cause we needed a heavily-built conveyor that would last longer and not wear out as fast from barn and feed moisture. It's 16 ft. long and cost about $400 to build. We've used it for 6 mos. with no problems." Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Louis Wuest, 1925 W. Fisk Ave., Oshkosh, Wis. 54901 (ph 414 233-3783). ^

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