JP2001038233A - Coin-operated rice-milling machine - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To enable a user to necessarily receive the rice-milling service corresponding to a charged coin by setting the operation standby state corresponding to left brown rice after operation over a predetermined time is completed even if brown rice which should have been milled is left in a charging port without being milled by a user's careless mistake. SOLUTION: In this coin-operated rice-cleaning machine wherein a building is partitioned into a machine chamber and a user's room and the machine chamber is equipped with the brown rice feeder 5 communicating with at least the brown rice charging hopper 4 on the side of the user's room, a stone removing device, a rice-milling device 7, a milled rice housing tank 8 and a control device for controlling them and rice-milling treatment is automatically performed corresponding to the number of the coins charged in the coin charging port of the operation panel 10 disposed at the user's room, a rice grain sensor 12 detecting the presence of brown rice is set to the brown rice feeder 5 and, when the rice grain sensor 12 does not detect brown rice before the operation time corresponding to the number of charged coins is over, the data of the remaining time Tr is stored in the control device to stop the brown rice feeder 5 and, at a point of time when the rice-milling treatment of taken-in brown rice is completed, the operation standby time corresponding to the remaining time Tr is set.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a coin milling machine that operates by inserting coins.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In recent years, unmanned coin-milling machines, in which customers bring in brown rice and mill themselves, have become widespread. The building of the coin milling machine is divided into a guest room and a machine room, equipped with a brown rice transport device that takes in brown rice from the guest room side to the machine room side and supplies it to the hopper of the rice milling device, a stone milling device, a rice milling device, The polished rice that has been milled is stored in the polished rice tank on the guest room side. In the guest room, the driving procedure is displayed in an easily visible place, and the passenger can rely on this to drive the rice mill by himself. Once started, the computer is programmed to run automatically. The procedure for starting operation is generally as follows. 1) Judge the required fee for the amount of brown rice brought in from the fee table and insert coins into the coin slot. (10
The price is fixed at 100 yen per kilogram. 2) Put brown rice into the slot. 3) Press the desired whiteness switch (upper white, standard, or seven-step).

[0003] When the whiteness switch is pressed, the brown rice transport device starts operating, and continues to operate for a time corresponding to a preset amount of money to take in brown rice. Even after the brown rice transport device stops, the destoning device and the rice milling device continue to operate, and the sensor mounted on the hopper of the rice milling device automatically stops upon receiving a signal that the hopper is empty. It has become.

[0004] Further, if the milling of all the introduced brown rice is completed, even during the driving time for the inserted coins,
Clearing the remaining operation time information and terminating the operation of the rice milling machine saves unnecessary waiting for the next user and saves electricity bills by idling, so recent coin milling machines are Equipped with a sensor to detect the presence or absence of brown rice in the input hopper and transport path of brown rice, or in the hopper of the rice mill,
It is controlled so as to avoid useless idle operation as much as possible.
To give a specific example, a user mistakenly inserts more coins than specified, for example, 300 kg for 20 kg of brown rice.
Even if a certain amount of brown rice is polished, such as when a coin is inserted, or when a coin such as 15 kg is charged with a shortage of 2 coins because the charge is insufficient, even during a predetermined driving time, When the rice polishing is completed, the coin information is cleared and the operation is terminated.

[0005]

The brown rice hopper of such a coin milling machine is formed at a position as low as a knee at most so that a user does not have to lift a heavy bag containing brown rice to a high place. I have. Figure 7
As shown in, place the brown rice bag 41 on the mounting table 40,
The rice mill is started while the bag is turned forward and brown rice is poured into the input hopper 4. However, it is often the case that brown rice remains at the bottom of the bag just by knocking down the bag. Most brown rice bags are made of opaque cardboard that cannot be seen inside.At this point, the rice that has already been milled has begun to flow out from the other one after another. There are many cases where the brown rice that has been taken is not noticed by the brown rice remaining without being taken. For the rice milling machine, if the sensor installed in the input hopper or the transport path detects that brown rice does not flow, it judges that brown rice is gone and ends the operation, and the customer finishes the brown rice remaining. By the time I noticed it was too late, there was no other way but to insert more crying coins or call a manager with a service call and ask me to return the extra charges.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention has been made to solve such a problem, and even if brown rice, which should be able to be polished due to the carelessness of a user, remains at the input port without being polished, the present invention has been developed. It is an object of the present invention to provide a coin milling machine capable of always receiving a milling service corresponding to the inserted coins by returning after completion of time driving.

[0007]

In order to achieve the above object, a coin milling machine according to the present invention divides a building into a machine room and a guest room, and communicates with the machine room from at least a brown rice input hopper on the guest room side. A coin that is equipped with a brown rice transport device, a destoning device, a rice polishing device, a white rice storage tank, and a control device that controls them, and automatically performs rice polishing according to the number of coins inserted into a coin slot of an operation panel provided in a guest room. In the rice milling machine, the brown rice transport device has a rice grain sensor for detecting the presence or absence of brown rice, and when the rice grain sensor has not detected brown rice before the operation time according to the number of coins inserted expires. Storing the remaining time information in the control device, stopping the brown rice transport device, and returning to the operation standby state for the remaining time when the rice processing of the taken brown rice is completed. And it features.

[0008] The rice grain sensor may be provided inside the charging hopper for brown rice, or may be provided on a subsequent transport path. However, it is preferable to attach it to a position where even a small amount of brown rice can be reliably detected. It is necessary to provide a certain waiting time from when the rice grain sensor does not detect brown rice to when the brown rice transport device is stopped. That is, the interruption of the rice flow may be temporary, or may continue forever if left unchecked, so that transport is not stopped in the case of a temporary interruption. Another reason is that all the brown rice in the middle of the transportation at that time is poured into the next process.

[0009] With the above function, if brown rice is left behind due to carelessness of the customer, the rice is returned to a operable state once the rice polishing is completed once, and it is notified that the driving time is still left. As a result, the user is inevitably aware of the brown rice left behind, and can finish the rice polishing safely within the price.

It is preferable that the remaining time is divided by the driving time per coin and replaced with the remaining information of the coin for control. Doing this 1
Since a small amount of remaining time less than the coin amount is discarded, when the brown rice is completely taken in at a prescribed rate, the return operation is not started, and unnecessary driving is omitted as much as possible, and profitability is improved.

[0011] More than a specified number of coins are inserted for the amount of brown rice brought in (for example, 3 coins for 20 kg of brown rice).
In the case where the rice is thrown in for example, the rice is inevitably returned even if brown rice is taken in normally. As described in claim 3, in consideration of the case where the return is not required, if the start signal is not input after the restart waiting time in the operation standby state after the return, the remaining retained Clear the time or remaining coin information and end the operation of the rice mill.

[0012]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS An embodiment of a coin milling machine according to the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. The coin milling machine according to the present invention comprises a machine room 2 and a guest room 3 as shown in FIGS.
The machine room 2 has a brown rice transporting device 5, a stone removing device 6, a rice milling device 7, and a white rice storage tank 8 which communicate with a brown rice input hopper 4 on the passenger room side in the machine room 2.
And a control panel 15 having a built-in control device and serving as an operation panel 10 whose front surface is exposed to the cabin 3. When the user inserts brown rice and a predetermined number of coins and starts driving, the operation is stored in the control device. Automatically performs rice polishing processing for the inserted coins according to the program.

The brown rice inlet hopper 4 is installed at a low position on the passenger room side so that a user can easily put brown rice. The brown rice transport device 5 includes a brown rice take-in conveyor 16 that takes in the introduced brown rice into the machine room 2, and a brown rice pumping conveyor 17 that pumps up the taken brown rice and puts the brown rice into the hopper 20 for the next process. The brown rice take-in conveyor 16 has a screw-shaped screw shaft 1 on a U-shaped conveyance path.
The motor 8 rotates the screw shaft 18 to continuously transport brown rice to the machine room 2. A rice grain sensor 12 is provided on the rear wall inside the charging hopper 4, and this sensor can reliably detect even a small amount of brown rice, for example, a type that detects a change in capacitance. I do. The brown rice pumping conveyor 17 has a flat belt with a number of buckets 19 attached between upper and lower pulleys, and takes in brown rice into the bucket 19 and conveys it upward.

The brown rice conveyed by the brown rice pumping conveyor 17 is put into a stone removal hopper 20. The stone removal device 6 is a device for removing stones and the like mixed in brown rice,
It comprises a sorting plate 21 that swings in an inclined state, and a wind tunnel unit having a built-in stone removal fan 22 on the lower surface side of the sorting plate 21. The brown rice that has fallen on the sorting plate 21 is subjected to the swinging motion of the sorting plate 21 and the ventilation of the stone removal fan 22, and stones having a high specific gravity are gathered and removed on the upper portion of the sorting plate 21, and the sorted brown rice is removed. Flows down to the lower part of the sorting plate 21 and flows into the hopper 23 of the rice mill 7 in the next step. A rice sensor 24 is provided at the bottom of the hopper 23 to detect the presence or absence of brown rice.

In the milling device 7, a milling roll 26 is rotated in a cylindrical milling chamber 25 communicating from a hopper outlet,
The brown rice is fed forward by friction with the whitening roll 26, and the bran is scraped off in the process. The outlet of the refining chamber 25 is elastically closed by a resistance plate 27, and the pressure of the outlet is controlled by a command issued from a control device according to a whiteness switch 13 selected by a user, and the resistance motor 28 is rotated forward and reverse. Is set. The white rice discharged from the whitening room 25 against the resistance plate 27 is stored in the white rice storage tank 8 facing the cabin 3. The peripheral wall of the refining chamber 25 has a wire mesh shape, and the end thereof is connected to a bran collecting fan 29. The separated bran is sucked together with air by the bran collecting fan 29, and separated into bran and air by the bran collecting cyclone 30. The bran is stored in the bran collection bag 35. The whitening roll 26 is driven by a rice polishing motor 31, and the rice bran fan 29 is driven by a rice bran fan motor 32.

An operation panel 10 as shown in FIG. 3 is formed on the front surface of the control panel 15. The operation panel 10 is provided with a coin insertion slot 11, three whiteness switches 13 for selecting a degree of whitening, an indicator light 33 for an insertion fee, and the like. The display also urges the customer to perform the three steps required to start the rice mill (insert coin, insert brown rice, and press the whiteness switch) in order. A control device using a so-called microcomputer is provided inside the control panel 15. As shown in FIG. 4, the controller takes in input data output from a switch or a sensor into a controller via an input interface, performs predetermined processing based on program data recorded in a memory, and generates a start signal and a display signal. Output to output interface. The output interface applies a predetermined start signal and a predetermined light emission signal to each of the motors and the light emitting elements according to the start signal and the display signal output from the controller.

The operation and operation sequence of the coin milling machine according to the present invention will be described below with reference to the flowcharts of FIGS. First, coins are inserted according to the amount of brown rice brought by the customer. Then, the number-of-charges detecting means detects the number of inserted coins and displays the number on the charge display lamp 33. At the same time, the three whiteness switches 13 blink, informing the user that the vehicle is ready for operation.
In response to this, the user puts brown rice into the brown rice input hopper 4 and presses a desired whiteness switch 13. Then, the selected whiteness switch 13 is turned on, the other two lights are turned off, and at the same time, the controller reads the signal emitted by the whiteness switch, and the brown rice take-in conveyor 16, the brown rice pumping conveyor 17, the stone removal device 6 Starts. In addition, the resistance motor 28 is rotated forward and reverse to set the resistance to the whiteness switch 13 selected.

The counting of the operation time T corresponding to the inserted coin is started in the controller after waiting for the brown rice detection ON signal of the rice grain sensor 12. This means that if the whiteness switch 13 is pressed after the brown rice is inserted as specified, the count of T starts at the same time as the whiteness switch 13 is pressed. However, since it is conceivable that the customer may accidentally press the whiteness switch 13 before turning on the brown rice, it is possible to prevent brown rice from being left behind by counting idle driving when such a delay occurs. To do that. In addition, since there is a case in which there is no intention of milling such as mischief, if the waiting operation for charging exceeds a predetermined limit time Tn, the operation shifts to the counting of the operating time T regardless of the presence or absence of brown rice charging.

The brown rice is conveyed to the hopper 2 of the rice mill 7
When the rice accumulates at 3, the rice sensor 24 in the hopper 23 is turned on to detect brown rice, and in response to this, the rice polishing device 7 and the rice bran fan 29 are activated to start rice polishing. It is stored in the tank 8. The milling device 7 continues to operate until the milling sensor 24 is turned off, that is, until all the brown rice taken in is milled. In the present coin milling machine, by controlling the operation time of the brown rice take-in conveyor 16, the amount of brown rice corresponding to the inserted coin is taken. When the count of the operation time T expires while the rice grain sensor 12 in the brown rice input hopper 4 is in the ON state, only the brown rice take-in conveyor 16 is stopped. When a plurality of coins have been inserted, when the first T-count expires, the fee indicator light 33 is reduced by one and the process proceeds to the second T-count. Brown rice take-in conveyor 1 with "1" held in indicator light 33
6 is stopped. At this time, brown rice remains in the loading hopper 4, and if the user notices this and an additional coin is inserted, the brown rice take-in conveyor 16 is activated again, and the remaining brown rice is counted while counting T. Transport. If there is no additional input, the rice milling is finished once the milled rice is finished, and the controller receives the brown rice detection ON signal of the rice grain sensor 12 and notifies the user that the usage fee is insufficient to indicate that the usage fee is insufficient. Is lit to inform the user.

On the other hand, when the rice grain sensor 12 is switched from ON to OFF before the operation time T expires, the take-in of the brown rice has been completed, or the brown rice has been left in the bag due to a bad manner of introduction. It is expected that the US flow will be interrupted. Therefore, when the rice grain sensor 12 switches from ON to OFF, the counting of the operation time T is interrupted and the counting of the waiting time Tw1 is started. The interruption of the rice flow is temporary, and during the counting of Tw1, the rice grain sensor 12
Is switched from OFF to ON again, the count of Tw1 is cleared and the count of T is restarted. When the count of the waiting time Tw1 expires while the rice grain sensor 12 continues to maintain the OFF state, the brown rice take-up conveyor 16
Is stopped, and after waiting until the brown rice that has been taken up is finished, all running devices are stopped, "0" is displayed on the charge indicator light 33, the whiteness switch 13 is turned off, and the rice milling machine is turned off. The operation ends once.

The following is an important part of the present invention. The calculation of the remaining time Tr at the time when the counting of the operation time T is interrupted is executed in the controller. Remaining time T
r is Tr = (driving time T × number of coins) − (elapsed time until interruption of T count). The remaining time Tr derived in this manner may be used as a target for return as it is, but since it is complicated and wasteful, the remaining time Tr is divided by the driving time T per coin to convert the remaining time Tr into coin remaining information. And round down fractions. Explaining with a specific example, assuming that T is 30 seconds, three coins are inserted, and the T count is interrupted after 20 seconds have elapsed, the remaining time Tr is 70 seconds, and the coin remaining information is “2”. . Therefore, "2" is displayed on the fee indicator light 33, the three whiteness switches 13 blink again, and the operation returns to the standby state for two coins.

[0022] If the user puts in more than the prescribed fee (for example, he puts in 300 yen for 20 kg of brown rice), he returns even though the brown rice that has been thrown in is completely removed. In this case, the customer is expected to return home without leaving the need for further rice polishing, leaving the user in the returning state, causing confusion for later customers. The counting of the time Tw2 is started, and if the start signal is not input before the expiration of Tw2, that is, if the whiteness switch 13 is not selected, the remaining coin information is cleared and the operation ends. Tw2 is set to about 2 minutes.

[0023]

According to the first aspect of the present invention, there is provided a coin milling machine having a sensor for detecting the presence or absence of brown rice in the brown rice transporting device. It has a function to interrupt the counting of the operation time and return to the operation standby state for the remaining time after finishing the milled brown rice, so if the brown rice remains without being taken into the rice milling machine due to the carelessness of the user. However, the user can safely finish the rice polishing within the prescribed fee without any panic.

According to the second aspect of the present invention, by replacing the remaining time with the remaining information of the coin, unnecessary return is suppressed and unnecessary driving is not performed, thereby improving profitability.

In some cases, the user does not need to restart after returning, so that the return state is automatically terminated after a certain period of time, as in the invention according to claim 3. Then, when the next customer comes, the rice mill can be used immediately.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram showing the configuration of each device installed in a machine room arranged in the order of processing.

FIG. 2 is a schematic view seen from above showing an embodiment of a coin milling machine according to the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a front view showing an example of an operation panel of the coin polishing machine according to the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a block diagram showing an example of a control system of the coin polishing machine according to the present invention.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart illustrating an example of an operation state of the coin polishing machine according to the present invention.

FIG. 6 is a continuation of the flowchart shown in FIG. 5;

FIG. 7 is a schematic view showing a form of a brown rice charging hopper portion.

[Explanation of symbols]

 DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 Building 2 Machine room 3 Guest room 4 Brown rice charging hopper 5 Brown rice transporting device 6 Stone removal device 7 Rice polishing device 8 White rice storage tank 10 Operation panel 11 Coin slot 12 Rice grain sensor

Continued on the front page F-term (reference) 3E044 AA20 BA01 BA10 CA01 CA02 CC01 CC06 DA03 DB02 EA04 EB01 EB05 FB09 FB20 3E048 AA10 BA01 4D043 HA02 JC05 JC10 JE01 JF02 JF07 JF08 LA02 LA18 MA01 MA23 MA30 MB04 MB19 MB30

Claims (3)

[Claims] The interior of a building (1) is partitioned into a machine room (2) and a passenger room (3), and the machine room (2) communicates with a brown rice feeding hopper (4) at least on the passenger room side. ), A stone removal device (6), a rice milling device (7), a white rice storage tank (8), and a control device for controlling them, and a coin slot (11) of an operation panel (10) provided in a passenger compartment (3). A rice grain sensor for automatically detecting the presence or absence of brown rice in the rice milling machine for automatically performing rice polishing according to the number of coins inserted into the rice mill.
If the rice grain sensor (12) does not detect brown rice before the operation time (T × the number of coins) according to the number of inserted coins expires, the remaining time (Tr)
Is stored in the control device, the brown rice transport device (5) is stopped, and when the milling of the taken brown rice is completed, the operation returns to the operation standby state for the remaining time (Tr). Coin milling machine. 2. The coin milling machine according to claim 1, wherein said remaining time (Tr) is divided by a driving time per coin (T) and replaced with remaining coin information for control. 3. When the start signal is not input even after the restart waiting time (Tw2) has passed in the driving standby state after returning, the remaining time (Tr) or the remaining information of the coin that has been held is cleared. 3. The coin milling machine according to claim 1, wherein the operation is terminated.