I've been working on a design for a new cheese press. My old press, the first one I made, has served me well for the past 16 months, but it only allowed me to go up to 150 lbs. of press, which was plenty for the smaller, 2-gallon, 4.5" diameter cheeses I started out making, but has been a bit too little for some of the larger, 4-gallon-and-up, 8" diameter cheeses I've been making lately, especially in hard-to-press varieties such as cheddar.
I have a prototype of a press that
John@perfect-cheese.com has been working on which allows for substantially greater force by way of a pulley system (approximately 6x mechanical advantage). It is a light, elegant design which can be assembled and disassembled easily without tools, and it works very well. Likewise, Smolt1 (
http://sturdypress.com) has two lovely designs, one that offers selectable 5x or 9x mechanical advantage, with a design max of 350 lbs (though it can go higher), and one that can fold up for storage, with a design max of 200 lbs (though again, it can go higher). All three of these presses are designed to accept weights that hang from the main lever, though either of Smolt's designs could be modified to accept weights affixed directly to the levers.
As elegant and useful as all three of these designs are, they are not ideal for my particular situation. I need my press to stay in place on top of my cheese "cave," both for storage and during use. That means the entire press cannot be wider than 18", it cannot be clamped down, and it does not lend itself to hanging the weight. (It also means there has to be enough height on the base that I can set a bowl to catch the whey that presses out, but that is a minor matter.) Ideally, therefore, I want something that can accept weights directly on the arm of the press (I use weights from my weight machine) and that can select from low to very high mechanical advantage without having a lever extending out beyond the footprint of the base of the press (and therefore does not need to be clamped down or have a counter-balancing weight extending behind).
Inspired in part by a picture seen here on the forum -- unfortunately I can't seem to find the thread to link to -- I have come up with my own version of a compound lever press, one which adds selectable mechanical advantage (2x, 8x, 13x, 24x). I've included pictures below. The first picture is the picture I copied from the forum of the press that started my thinking. Following are a couple of pictures of the assembled press. As shown it is in the 8x configuration; to increase the MA, the vertical "arm" that connects the main and secondary levers is moved to either of the holes closer to the upright. Following that are several pictures of the frame and the parts, including a couple of close-ups of the acme screw and nut -- the first time I've machined one of those, so I was quite pleased with how it came out. Finally there are a couple of shots of the press in the 2x configuration.
I've also attached the plans. I've put a copyright notice on them, just because, but frankly I don't think this press would be commercially viable to produce. As you can see from the plans and the pictures, there are a LOT of parts, including at least one metal part (the nut) that would have to be custom-made (the screw could be bought off-the-shelf for a reasonable price). Thus, the selling price would have to be many hundreds of $$ to make it worthwhile as a commercial enterprise ... and I just can't imagine there are enough people who would be willing to pay the high price for this press. But if any of you feel inspired to make your own, have at it!
