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Big Dragon makes it Home

The big 12" Crystal Dragon and 1000 Liter steam jacket flanged boiler landed today, thought I'd share a couple photos of the unloading for the folks here.

Kudos to the global SD team, we are all very, very impressed. Nothing was broken, we broke nothing, It was a good day!

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Comments

  • Griiiiiiiiim.

    StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America

  • Oh boy that looks good. Can't wait to see it all unboxed!

  • @grim said: image

    What the hell I never get one of those pretty girls in my shipments @Smaug. Congrats @grim

    MOCS

    The day you quit learning is the day you start dying!

    "I am an incurable gadgeteer, and I like enormously to set up a theory and then track down the consequences" Murray Leinster youtube.com/watch?v=08e9k-c91E8

  • I did not mean to ship that pretty girl to you. It was a mistake. Please put her back in the crate and return the crate. Thanks.

  • That's a BIG box! :)

    Your Place to be >>> www.StillDragon.org <<< Home of the StillDragon® Community Forum

  • Thats awesome Grim.

  • ......... .

    .

    StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America

  • Of my wife? :))

    Coming! Coming! Sorry working on another project, we didn't want to unpack everything just yet. I'm trying to find the right RTD probes for the condensers.

    I'll probably head down to the shop and lug everything back up here to do some test fit, find rod, measure for hard coolant lines. God knows someone will break it otherwise.

    BTW - How many 1.5" TC to 3/4 copper adapters do you have left?

  • I have 3 left before they are gone forever.

    StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America

  • @Manofconstantsorrow said: What the hell I never get one of those pretty girls in my shipments @Smaug. Congrats @grim

    I had a giant cockroach leap out of my still crate right when I pried the top off... that made for a good laugh

  • edited November 2014

    @Kill_Devil_Spirit_Co said: I had a giant cockroach leap out of my still crate right when I pried the top off... that made for a good laugh

    Really ? Dang sorry about that.

    Would have fumigated have I known.

    StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America

  • Smaug is teaching em to breed with the little cockaroaches so that they infest your home in a big way... a positive remembrance of StillDragon.. care of the Smaug... :D

  • No cockroaches, but they did leave that nice blue microfiber polishing cloth in the crate.

  • edited November 2014

    Hopefully the only animals that come with a StillDragon Europe shipped boiler are gummi bears - they are made in Linz. We think, they are the right nerve food for unpacking and assembling. B-)

    StillDragon Europe - Your StillDragon® Distributor for Europe & the surrounding area

  • edited November 2014

    Joking aside, the crates were packed impeccable. We were terrified that there would be damage, having heard horror stories about LTL ocean freight. Larry and Lloyd were expert about managing the shipping process, they had all the right contacts between truckers and forwarders, etc. Larry saved my ass by having the trucking co push delivery a day, I wasn't comfortable driving the forklift and offloading the crate, and my pinch hitter couldn't make it.

    Frankly shocked at how fast it made it through the Suez and across the ocean. Probably waved at Sunshine as it sailed through the Mediterranean. Was through Port Newark, customs, and at our doorstep in a week.

    Trucker saved our ass too, because our forks weren't long enough, and we were able to lower it in tandem using the lift gate and fork lift in concert. Thank god we called in the pinch hit driver, because this operation was like ballet. Everyone was holding their breath.

    Heading down to the shop this afternoon to grab some parts and do a test fit.

    The monster dephlegmator is amazing, just amazing. I understand why Lloyd threw his back out, it literally takes two people to move it, one person can not pick it up.

    To build the column we mounted a cable hoist on an I beam above the still, there is no way, no way, anyone could put the 12" column together without a hoist and rigging. Impossible. 4 plates will weigh in at over 300 lbs I wager, maybe closer to 400 with flanges and piping..

  • I lifted the copy of that beast of a dephlegmator by myself to send it on to be crated.
    I had bruises on my forearms for a week... somewhat like the old KungFu TV show where the guy burns a tiger on one arm and a dragon on the other.
    It is not safe for one person to lift it.

    It seemed to take forever to get it designed, produced and finally loaded aboard ship but the transit time for this one was quick. Clearing customs can be the wildcard and its not possible to know if any shipment will get singled out for close inspection but we got lucky on this one.

    Good freight forwarders are worth their weight in gold.

  • Australian freight forwarders charge their weight in gold...

  • I can lift one of those with each hand.....if I wanted to. Its just that I dont want to.....But I could. Its just that I don't want to.

    Pics?

    StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America

  • edited November 2014

    Can't wait to get this together, it looks fantastic. I'm sure my photo does this no justice. Workmanship is really just spectacular. The photos of the inside of the parts look better than the outsides, the fillets and radiuses all perfect.

    Stacked with the plumbing up top it will be taller than I am at 6'3, on top of the boiler it means a good 11 or 12 feet for a 4 plate setup.

    Photo absolutely does not do this justice from a scale perspective. I dropped a soda can in just for reference. Oh, and that's a 4" TC at the top, not 2".

    My local stainless hardware depot is open to the public on Tuesdays, I'm going to stop in and spend a couple of hundred bucks on threaded rod and hardware for the column and parrot assembly.

    Once this sucker is mounted to the boiler it's going to be absolute eye candy.

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  • edited November 2014

    If you weren't following the initial thread, modularity is provided through clever flange/gasket mating system, which lets you do all sorts of interesting stuff, for example like putting a glass section above the dephlegmator to house an additional copper catalyst.

    What isn't included in the photo is the custom sprayball assembly that mounts to the 4" TC fitting at the top of the bowl, the ball protrudes down into the bowl chamber and allows me to CIP the catalyst as well as the deplegmator. Column CIP will be through forced-flooding from above.

    Later this evening, we will very gingerly try to mount the dephleg. above the glass sections to take a photo to really show the scale.

  • Maybe better to keep us waiting till you get the rod in?

    StillDragon Australia & New Zealand - Your StillDragon® Distributor for Australia & New Zealand

  • All fun and games until someone loses a toe.

  • Looks heavy enough to even go without rods :D

    Your Place to be >>> www.StillDragon.org <<< Home of the StillDragon® Community Forum

  • Hoolydooly that thing looks awesome!

  • Like when someone plugs in a DIY controller for the first time... I'm taking a couple of steps back.
    We talked about this @grim, that bigass dephleg needs the rods to take the weight away from the glass column. Its just so damn heavy.
    Folks can't understand just how massively heavy it is if they haven't seen it in real life. 6" is lots bigger than 4" and 8" is tons bigger than 6". 12" is off the scale.

    I will never, ever lift a 12" dephlegmator by myself again.

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  • edited November 2014

    LoO could lift it....in thongs.... while holding a pint in one hand and a durrie hanging out of his mouth. Just ask him;)

    @grim How much more efficient is running a jacketed boiler over running your boilers using straight elements? Is that an agitator motor on top of the boiler?

  • We decided against stacking the dephleg on the column for the sake of just taking a photo, it really is just too big and heavy, and too risky.

    Lloyd wanted to have the factory weld on lifting/hoist rings to the top of the column, I vetoed. Regretting that, it should probably have hoist rings. I'm going to find two heavy eye bolts I can bolt into the top dephleg flange to use as the lifting points, which is just about the best second option.

    Column will probably need to be assembled upside down, bolted, dropped to it's side, hoist rings attached, then gingerly lifted atop the boiler using the cable hoist mounted above. A little bit different from building a 4" CD.

    Then, someone can clip their belt into the hoist, be lifted into the air like something out of Mission Impossible, and finish the plumbing at the top.

    We have no idea about the boiler run times or efficiency yet. Straight elements are always going to be more efficient than steam, even with the insulated jacket. However, you hit a point where it's nearly impossible to easily add more power with electric. With a gas boiler, you have many more KW on tap, at a lower cost (for us), even if the efficiency is lower. Even a relatively small 400,000 btu boiler (10hp), is going to kick out nearly 100kw. That's ~420 amps at 240v, a little more than 18 5.5kw screw in elements.

  • edited November 2014

    The weight of the dephlegmator, bowl top, tee, cip, clamps, coolant fittings, thermo, top glass section and two gaskets is 165lbs, not including the rod/hardware, which will easily push it to 175lbs.

    The weight of the bottom flange, 5 glass sections, 4 plates, and gaskets is 100lbs without hardware, which will easily add 25lbs, pushing it to 125lbs.

    So, 300lbs for the assembled column, standing approximately 6' 3" tall with 4 plates. Add the CIP plumbing, clamps and vapor tubes to the product condenser, and the PC itself and it gets closer to 6' 6" 400lbs. Quite the portly gentleman.

  • edited November 2014

    human for scale

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