Hi All,

Not sure which section would be most appropriate, so I’ve stuck it in here. I want to make a centrifuge to clean the waste vegetable oil I run my Landcruiser on. Ideally, I need to machine it from a solid billet of ali, and in the interests of keeping it locost, would any of you enterprising folk, have a cheap source of billet ali? The finished centrifuge rotor would have a 24 cm OD and a height of 10 cm.

TIA, Ian.

Couldn't you use a suitably sized pressed aluminium or stainless saucepan?

not sure what volumes you require to be filtered, but couldnt you use a washing machine/spin drier on its back as a basis for making something.

chip as chips (free at local dump)

my motorbike has one in the engine, seems very effective. An old style carb air filter box, on its side with a disk spinning around inside would be ideal and almost ready made.

here you go I've done a rubbish sketch
Rescued attachment filter.jpg

Thanks for the input all. I have the design of the rotor sorted out. Saucepans could be lethal due to the forces involved. The washing machine is far too big! So back to the billet ali??

How fast is it spinning out of interest?

The planned rpm is 3500. It could spin slower, but the cleaning would take longer.

to be honest i'd ring around the ally stockists.

though its a big lump, its not ridiculous, so might not be a daft price for an offcut of that sort of size.