The mill prototype thresher was one of our first explorations: can we grind millet in a hand (or pedal power-modified) corn mill? Sticking the entire stalk in the mill jammed the screw feeder. Placing just grain and florets in the hopper produced a lot of broken grain -- a very undesirable outcome. We disassembled the mill and inserted first one and then two rubber sheets on either side of the grinding surfaces. ~2mm thick strong rubber on both surfaces eliminated grain breaking. Milling did separate many seeds from florets, but it appeared that the residence time between the rubber was inadequate to guarantee all the seeds separated. A larger diameter mill (than the ~4" corn mill) has potential.

But rather than pursue this approach to separate floret from seed, we concentrated on alternative threshing methods to directly separate seed from the panicle.



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