Building a fluid bed roaster

Ok, so, my main challenge in this project so far has been my handicap on working with metal. I'm not exactly a handyman and I really don't like to play with welding if I can help it. I've never really cut any metal either. This is a problem, when, you wanna put a little screen at the bottom of your funnel. I tried numerous approaches to fix a screen without welding but hasn't work so well so far. My next approach is to put the screen on the bottom pipe and fit the funnel "over it", so to speak. This project is pretty much testing my patience to the limit because I have to learn and figure out every little step and component.

So, as it turns out, my funnels are too shallow for the beans to move down naturally. In trying to find the right-sized funnel for the stainless steel pipe that fitted the heating element I ended up with these funnels: The effect looks like this. This is using the smallest one in the picture. However, these are still too flat so I found a place on taobao (major Chinese e-commerce platform by Alibaba) and ordered a custom-made one. Not here yet ...