I have been busy lately taking photos for an auction on one of the highly sought after Alpha-Laval cream separaters.
An Alpha-Laval (or De Laval) cream separator is a manually driven machine which separates cream from whole milk quickly via centrifugal force. In its time, it was a wonderful invention, as before people had to let milk sour in a suitable container before skimming the cream off by hand. Read more about cream separaters at this Wikipedia article.
The original De Laval cream separators are now highly sought after by antique collecters and lifestylers alike for both its looks, and its functionality. Our family had decided to sell ours, because cream can be separated from raw milk by other means.
Our family sold the machine for NZ$600 on Trade Me. (TradeMe is a online auction website in New Zealand. It provides the same services to Kiwis that ebay serves to Americans.)
See more? Click for the Flickr set
hey just got a seperator like your one it has about 17 cups inside ,could you tell me if that is the correct amount ,most interested thanks ian
We haven’t got the Alfa Laval any more, so I can’t confirm, but I estimate about 23-25 discs in total. I imagine that you can still make the centrifuge work even if you only have a stack of 15-17 intermediate discs (the ones that go in the middle). But you’ll need to have the unique top disc and the bottom disc to make it fit properly. Check out this photo from the manual for a diagram of how it’s put together:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thinsmek/4673827644/