Cement Mixer Turned Dough Mixer

Hey ya'll, I've been lurking for years and gathered a lot of good information here...so thank everyone for that.  I've lived the trajectory of cube monkey to full-time baker and bakery owner and back to a life not in bread.  I'm hoping to swing back the other way, but I wanted to share a project I had been working on but never finished in hopes that it might help someone else trying to scale up into small commercial baking or cottage baking.

As an experiment one day, I took a standard issue $150,1.25 cu. foot cement mixer and threw a 20 pound batch of ingredients in.  It produced some of the most beautiful dough I've ever worked with.  It could have probably handled 60 pounds of dough easily.

I checked with the health department both locally and state to see what it would take to convert the cement mixer into a dough mixer and not have any problems from their department.  The general consensus was that the bowl and blades of the mixer would need to be removed of all paint and an approved non-toxic coating applied to the steel.  They said to document the process and keep a record of it in case anyone ever asked.

I researched medical grade powdercoating and industrial chroming (the same process used on the hydraulic pistons of commercial tractors), but ultimately decided that the best option was to go old-fashioned and have the bowl "tinned".  If you're not familiar with the process, many old bakeries still have to send off their old steel bowls to have a tin coating applied every now and then.  It's not often, and it's not terribly expensive.  I was also told to avoid sandblasting with the wrong media as it can pit the metal.

The other consideration was that there is a rubber seal separating the two halves of the mixer bowl.  The idea would be to replace that with a food grade seal either silicone (silpat?) or food grade rubber.

Replacing the nuts with wing nuts to allow for a quick dis-assembly would be ideal too.  That would be for the blades inside the bowl and the two halves of the bowl itself. 

Why a cement mixer?  

1. It's cheap: Total estimated cost for a new mixer and to have it tinned and replace the necessary small parts is less than $600.  That's less than a used, needs work Hobart 20qt and you'd have almost triple the capacity.

2. It's extremely durable and simple.  If you ever had a problem, you could go down to your local big box hardware store and replace the head unit.

3. It replicates the folding and tumbling motion of hand mixing almost the way a diving arm mixer does.

4. It's quiet!  Very quiet!

Maybe it's not the solution for you, but when I was desperate for a larger mixer solution at a low cost, this was what I could come up with and prototype.  Maybe if the bowl itself could be replicated in stainless steel, then there'd be no need to go through the whole coating process.  Maybe there's a better way to do it....suggestions?

Happy baking!