Hi!
Funny-this is my first post to the board-
I am a machinist that loves cheese.
A problem with multiple cutters would be the aggregate surface area when making the cut. The more cutting surfaces, the greater resistance to cutting, and increased likelihood that it will become a horizontal press. Taken to the extreme, how about just cutting with cloth? You already know you will just shove the curds around the container. They are strong enough to resist cutting when enough surfaces are being simultaneously cut.
I looked at a machined solution here, and it seems sensible, however the spring was offered as a possible cleaning roadblock. How about a "flat" spring instead, with a ball/detent on the vertical shaft? At least a flat piece of "spring" steel would be easier to clean. And I would skip a bronze bearing. We aren't looking for high RPM's or loading- the shaft just needs to go through without getting hung up when it's time to adjust. Probably just use a stainless sleeve. The entire assembly must be broken down for simple washing.
Any thoughts?
Cheers!
Stan
Hi Gnarly, and welcome to the forum. This is actually my first time reading and posting on the forum for just about a year - got too busy and didn't make much cheese at all during the last part of 2017 and most of 2018 - very sad. Fortunately I had enough "stock" in my cave to keep me going for a while, but it is mostly gone now. Now I'm trying to restock - still not making cheese as often as I did a few years ago, but getting something made every three weeks or so - in the last two months I've made a Double Gloucester, an Asiago, and a Danablu, as well as a couple of batches of camembert.
As for the design of the cutter - I've stayed with the basic design shown in the pictures of the first post. No springs (unless you count the hitch pins), and no bronze bearing; as you note, there is no need for such. I have converted everything over to stainless steel, including the hitch pins. (Couldn't find stainless hitch pins at a price I wanted to pay, so I simply bent some up out of TIG welding rods.) I've also dispensed with the screws that held the hub in place on the wooden cross piece - the fit of the hub in the cross piece is tight enough, and the load is so low, that no screws are needed. Thus, everything other than the wood cross piece can go in the dishwasher.
As a machinist, you might enjoy the thread describing my compound lever press shown in my avatar:
http://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,14493.0.html. The plans are included, but easy to miss - look for a link to a .pdf file just after the pictures in the first post. Updates and additions to the design are included in later posts in the thread. Further down you'll also see a modified design that can be built entirely from wood (it doesn't use the screw).