Power Cube

• When considering a power source for the CEB press we need to decide on whether to buy a hydraulic power unit or build a power cube
  • The minimum flow rate is 6 gpm but the rate of block production can be increased to 10 blocks per minute with a 30 gpm flow rate
  • A log splitter hydraulic is considered to power the CEB press with a smaller engine and less fuel
  • It is unclear whether best CEB press is the version 17.08 press or the version 16.09 (prototype 8) with the version 19.01 controller
• The main cylinder is used to press the soil and the secondary cylinder is used to move the soil loading drawer. The recommended cylinders are the following:
  • Main Cylinder: Magister Hydraulics WCT 5x16 which can handle a maximum pressure of 3500 psi
  • Secondary Cylinder: LYNX 35LX14-125 which can handle a maximum pressure of 2500 psi
• The latest powercube is version 17.10 and has 16 hp and 64 hp versions
  • The 64 hp version can achieve a 32 gpm flow rate
  • The 16 hp version seems to be intended to power the MicroTrac
• The version 16.8 powercube uses a twin 18 hp engine which can achieve a flow rate of 21.1 gpm but it does not appear to be ready for replication
• The version 15.6 powercube uses a 28 hp engine and can be used for each machine but is still under development and is not ready for replication but it can achieve a maximum pressure of 3000 psi and a maximum flow rate of 15.2 gpm
• If we build our own unit then I believe we should replicate powercube 7 for the CEB press since:
  • it appears that this is the latest version where there is sufficient documentation for replication,
  • it uses a 28 hp engine which is the most common power rating of the powercube models and although it isn't expected to press the maximum rate of 10 bricks per minute, it is expected to be sufficient for the CEB press,
  • it can achieve a maximum pressure of 3000 psi and a maximum flow rate of 15.2 gpm and this pressure rating does not significantly exceed the maximum pressure of the secondary cylinder
• We could consider running the CEB press off of our log splitter but it only has a 15 hp engine and therefore would probably run pretty slowly

Buy a Hydraulic Power Unit

It appears that buying a hydraulic power unit would be much more expensive than building one.

Decision

Since building a hydraulic power unit does not appear to be too complicated and we would save a lot of money by building one ourselves.

To operate the CEB press/soil mixer, Marcin recommended either version 6 or 7.10. Version 6 uses a $1,000 28 hp engine and version 7.10 uses a $300 16 hp engine. Marcin also said that they are working on a new version that will utilize a Changfa Diesel engine for longevity. Scharf wants to start on an existing version rather than wait for the new version so he can get going working on something. However, since our log splitter has a 15 horsepower engine which is comparable to the version 7.10 powercube, I think we could potentially just modify the hoses from that to use since similarly to the CEB press it also works by pumping hydraulic fluid through a large cylinder.