A Pictorial Look at the TwinBird Rice Mill

Back in August I posted an article about milling rice with the TwinBird Rice Mill. However, I was not able to include any pictures that could prove useful to those of a mind to construct their own mill. I committed to doing so and I now have the needed pictures.

As we shall see this arrangement seems like it can point the way to a very workable small rice mill that would handle, say, 20 lbs. of rice. Anyway, let’s take a close look at this baby. The TwinBrid mill is designed to run in the kitchens of Japan, handles 4 go (180ml) of rice at a time and runs on 100 Volts, 150Watts at 50-60 cycles. This makes it a good fit for US kitchens as well. The picture below shows the mill and its control panel. The left side is used to indicate the starting state of the rice to be milled, from white rice at the top to brown rice at the bottom. The right side is used to indicate the level of milling desired. Given this, I believe the setting shown gives the longest mill time setting.

Taking the mill apart, we can see the removable items. The base mill has a drive which comes through the center bottom of the basket area. In the open mouth of the mill fits the white plastic basket (left) that catches the nuka (rice flour) that is scraped off the rice as it flies around the basket made from expanded metal sheets (center). The propeller in the center basket is the agent that flings the rice around the basket. Finally is the safety lid that covers all of this when it is put together and enables the mills operation.

Below, we can see the baskets with the propeller removed. From this you can see how the propeller can sit on its drive and be spun around. You can also get a little more clarity on the expanded metal.

From the bottom angle, below, we can see how the propeller drive shaft, seen above, engages with the mill itself.

But for the clearest view of the expanded metal I have a side view of the basket below. Expanded Metal, looks kind of like a mesh screen with a diamond pattern for the opening. The center to center measurement, short way diamond x long way diamond is 7/64″ x 3/16″. The opening measurement, short way open x long way open is 1/16″ x 1/8″.

This swd x lwd size works well for milling rice at levels above ~80%. I would think that as the rice milling gets down to levels below 40% a smaller mesh would be important. I don’t know whether the finer mesh would slow the milling process. In my experiments the flower generated from milling became much coarser as the milling rate dipped down into the low percentages, that is below about 50% remaining.

Finally, below is a close up of the propeller. I am truly amazed that it has such small arms. The arms of the propeller for spinning the rice are just 1/8″ diameter.

Given all of this, it seems like building a mill that could handle 15-20lbs of rice would not be very hard. I will be considering this more and may give it a go, that is try, not 180ml :-).