Pictures of my Home Made Concrete Mixer

17 years ago

Here are some pictures of the Concrete Mixer I built

using a 55 gallon polyethylene drum.

Here is the mixer itself. You can also see the sand/gravel mix

that I get from down at the river to make concrete with.

Here is a front view of the mixer. The battery you see hanging there

is a counterweight to help me dump the drum when it is full.

Here is a close up view of one of the paddles inside the drum.

The paddles were cut from flat pieces of metal and they are

bolted to the inside of the drum on L brackets.

They are not mounted at an angle to the drum's rotation.

Here is part of the drive system for the mixer.

A 1725 RPM 1.5HP motor drives a 50:1 RA gearbox via a LoveJoy coupler

and the gearbox has a 3 inch sprocket on it and drives a 4.5 inch

sprocket on the drum shaft using a #50 roller chain.

Gives me a final drum speed of about 23 RPM.

Here are some of the paving block molds I have poured.

They are 12inches by 12inches x 3.5 inches thick.

And here is what I have been doing with them so far.

Making a walkway from my parent's house front steps to their driveway.

So far this thing works great.

I make about 1.5 cubic feet of concrete per batch.

This is enough for 4 paving blocks. This takes 20 shovels

of sand/gravel mix and 5 shovels of concrete.

The sand/gravel mix comes from the lower part of our property

where the river floods every spring and pushes it into big piles.

The mixer will hold more than 1.5 CF but any more than that

and it gets too heavy for me to dump it. If I was strong

enough it could mix 3 CF easy. Max capacity is just over 4 CF.

Pooh Bear

Comments (4)

tomplum
17 years ago
Nice job. The big opening is a plus. Curious on your reasoning for the straight (rather than at an angle)paddle mounting. It seems as tho it is well thought out!
Pooh Bear
Original Author
17 years ago
I had a 50-50 chance of straight mounted paddles working.
And it was easier to mount them that way.
So I took a chance. And it works just fine.

If it hadn't worked, I have 2 more identical drums.
Just about everything was scrounged up.
Got the right angle gearbox from a yard sale for $15.
And it already had a complete lovejoy coupling on it.
Already had the shaft and bearings and bolts and such.
So I really don't have much invested in this thing.

I plan on making more molds for making other stuff.
And I have some projects around here to do with it.

Pooh Bear
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lonewolfmichigan
17 years ago
I like it.Its amazing what 'home' engineers can invent.I imagine there are people with college degrees in mechanical engineering that could'nt think of something so simple yet somewhat involved.And having the river sand close by is nice.Great post Pooh Bear,thanks for sharing this.
lonewolfmichigan
As a side note,Harbor Freight has their 'made in china' mixers on sale this week.They hold 3 1/2 cubic yards with a 1/3 hp motor for $199.00 and they probrably don't work half as good as yours.
Pooh Bear
Original Author
17 years ago
The HF mixers have 3.5 CF drums.
If you turned the drum straight up
and filled it with water it would hold 3.5 CF of water.
They will only mix about 1.5 CF of concrete.
Says on the box, mixes up to 220 pounds of concrete.
A CF of concrete is about 150 pounds.
So 1.5 CF would be 225 pounds.

Where as my drum has a total capacity of 11 CF.
At full capacity it would mix about 4.25 CF of concrete.
But a lot would probably splatter out as it mixed.
So I think a realistic number would be 3 CF.
But the 1.5 CF I am making now is almost too heavy to dump.
If I had a helper I could probably mix bigger batches.
But for just me 1.5 CF works out about right.

Pooh Bear