In The construction industry The quality of The final product, be it a building, road or anything being constructed, depends on The quality of The materials used and definitely concrete is one of The most important components In construction. The performance of concrete is determined by its micro structure and its micro structure is determined by the composition, its curing conditions and mixing methods. There are various types of concrete mixers available and they include hydraulic cement mixer, mechanical mixers and manual concrete mixers.
Drum mixer falls under manual concrete mixer since it has to be controlled manually.
As a manual concrete mixer, drum mixers have a container with blades attached to the inside of the movable drum. The main purpose of the blades is to lift materials being mixed as the drum rotates and in each rotation the lifted material drops back into the mixer at the bottom of the drum and the cycle starts again. Since it is a manual concrete mixer the speed of the mixer can be easily controlled.
There are various types of hand powered cement mixer and they include; non-tilting, reversing and tilting drum mixers. Non-tilting drum mixer implies that orientation of the drum is fixed. The materials are added at one end and discharged at from other end of the mixing drum. In the reversible drum type concrete mixer, the materials are added and discharged through the same opening. What varies is the rotation of the drum whereby it rotates on one direction to mix and in the opposite direction to discharge.
The tilting type of drum mixer depends on what angle the drum mixer is tilted. The inclination varies. When the drum is almost horizontal, more energy is provided to the concrete before dropping. It is in dropping that the concrete is mixed. Therefore the higher the drop the higher the energy imparted to the concrete.
If you think of construction and your project is not a big one the best mixer would be a manual concrete mixer and you can pick one that works best for you from the various types that are available. To get more detailed info about this manual concrete mixer, you can read this page: http://chinaconcretemixers.com/manual-concrete-mixers/.