[Cob] mixing cob with a truck

[Shannon Dealy]

On Sun, 24 Sep 2006 hms.mommy at juno.com wrote:

> Wow.  I've never done anything with a bobvat or a skid loader (they're
> probably the same thing, for all I know.)

They are actually the same thing, one is a brand name that most people 
recognize, the other is the generic term for the unit.

> What about a plain old pickup truck, or a Suburban, or even a boring little 
> car?

The problem here is that you need to scoop up and flip the mix or you won't get 
good mixing, this is what the bucket is used for with skid loaders and 
tractors.  If you have been mixing by foot, think what happens to the mix 
before you use the tarp to roll it up, you end up with a compacted bottom layer 
of whatever ingredient was put down first.  I suppose you could put down a tarp 
so you can flip the mix by hand, but if you are having to do that, the batch 
sizes will be limited and my guess is you won't get any time savings using a 
car or truck.  Of course, I always encourage people to experiment, but I don't 
see where a car or truck would help out here.  If your clay were hard and dry 
in large chunks, a car or truck might work well as a pre-mixing crusher, but it 
doesn't sound like that is an issue for you.

[snip]
> Do you think the spinning motion is essential?  I can't see how we can
[snip]

You can't really do the spinning effect with a car or truck, skid loaders have 
independent drive on the left and right side, so you can actually run the 
wheels backwards on one side and frontwards on the other, this results in the 
mix-master effect and causes it to really dig into your mix and churn it up. 
Tractor cob is closer to what you would be doing as it is usually just running 
back and forth over the mix, however, you still need to be able to turn the 
pile in order to mix it all the way through, and without the bucket on the 
tractor I don't see how you are going to do this on a pile large enough to save 
you any time by using a car or truck.

FWIW.

Shannon C. Dealy      |               DeaTech Research Inc.
dealy at deatech.com     |          - Custom Software Development -
                       |    Embedded Systems, Real-time, Device Drivers
Phone: (800) 467-5820 | Networking, Scientific & Engineering Applications
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