Grinding feed

We are wanting to try to grind our own feed for our livestock. Save a little money and teach the kiddos some old school ways. I have this grinder(I think) from my Grandpa. Would this work for grinding corn and what do I hook it to? We have several gas engines from him too. Thanks

That"s a burr mill. Good for oats, wheat, barley,shelled corn, other small grains. Some can grind ear corn.The grinding is done by plates in the round housing, and the fineness of grind is adjusted by the spring loaded lever in front. The pulley is usually about ten inches in diameter, flat face, like on a tractor. Typically driven by a 20-30 belt hp tractor. IDK your brand, my experience is with an IHC.

To answer your question, will it grind corn? maybe...
Do you want to grind shelled corn or ear corn? Most of those old burr mills were only set up for shelled corn, and needed what was called a cob breaker in the hopper to grind ear corn. Secondly, it looks as though someone had set that one up to run with a shaft drive or electric motor drive. To run it with an old hit and miss gas engine, your going to have to find a pulley for it. Other than that, fill her up with shelled corn and grind away!

As was said,this is a 'burr mill'.Used for cracking
grains.Not as agressive as a hammer mill.Because of
the smaller V pulley,I'd say it was set up to be
driven with a large (5 horse?) electric motor.Or
someone could have set it up to be run by an old
tractor with a Vbelt drive.You could set up a
'hit/miss(or similar) engine on a flat belt to the
larger flat pulley

That a McCormick. In small grains, wheat etc., some whole
grainwill get through the burrs. Ive got one like it. I have run
mine with a 1 1/2 Deere engine. Probably need a bigger engine
ifyou were going to run ear corn. It is slow, but will make feed.

The inside pic on the other site shows a pretty agressive set of
hooks instead of an auger inside the hopper, donno if that
would be the cob breaker deal.

Many of them were built to be run on a hit and miss old gas
engine. Typically a short flat belt running it.

The vee belt pulley says it has been converted to run on an
electric motor at some time, or more modern gas engine.

The square hole in the end says maybe it also could be run by
a tractor pto. That would be the easiest for me, but could run
through a lot of fuel if you don't have a small sipping fuel
tractor....

Another common adaption back on the day was to set up an
old 3-speed transmission on a cart, and run it with any of the
power sources mentioned, and then use the transmission to
pick different speeds to run things with a pto shaft.

Any of those power units, you just have to get the rpm about
right, differnt size pulleys, or throttle setting, etc.

I don't know what the proper speed is for one of these things?
Slow and steady with lots of grease keeps the old iron turning
for years, but it don't know what a good steady rpm would be!
Especially if chipping up cobs would think slow.

Paul

Dad"s IHC had an "oscillating" arm inside the hopper- it had no impact on grinding grain, but I think it was designed for pushing ear corn into the burrs. I don"t see any drive mechanism in your picture for that arm. It was a different model than what you picture.

Thanks a lot guys! I was hoping that the pto shaft I have would fit in it and I could hook it up to the 300, but when I tried to fit it in it did not fit. I was thinking that an electric motor would work with that v belt pulley. Cant wait to give it a try.

PTO shaft on direct would not give correct RPM speed or direction. Just hauled a PTO powered version for a friend and it was chain speed change from pto shaft and it was powered from the back side and if you would hook the shaft directly to that spot it would make it turn in reverse. With it just dropping the feed into a bucket I don't know if it could work or not but the one I hauled had a auger on to put feed in wagon or bin and running backwards it would have tried to push the feed back up thru the mill. That mill is 55 mile from me or I could check the number of teeth on input shaft and mill shaft to get a speed.

The Frame sure is not made to stand up to a side load, like a flat belt would impart on the Mill..

If you try a PTO shaft, put all the necessary Safety Shields in place...

We used a rather small Hammer Mill with out JD "B" or AC WD and ground a large water tank of feed each time.
Didn't take much power to grind feed..

Ron.

So we got an old 5hp motor for the mill and fired it up. It works great. Have already ground 200 lbs of corn. I am wondering, I know the lever engages the blades, but what does the turning knob with the spring under it do? The other lever next to the bell housing adjusts the size of grind but don't know what the knob does. Anyone?