NZ197567A

NZ197567A - Wool cleaning apparatus beater drum co-operates with grid to dislodge dirt

Info

Publication number: NZ197567A
Application number: NZ197567A
Authority: NZ
Inventors: R T Anderson; N W Anderson
Original assignee: Dodd & Co Pty Ltd
Priority date: 1980-07-01
Filing date: 1981-06-29
Publication date: 1985-05-31
Also published as: AU534989B2; KR830006492A; IT8122678A0; IT1138004B; JPS5739218A; AU7247481A

Description

<div class="application article clearfix" id="description"> Privity J,- Complete Specification Rfed: ^ Class: P.9! 9.1>J °9... P.? ST J A 1.9 P. Publication Date: . MM???.. P.O. Journal, Wo: .^VTl^ 197567 Patents Porm No. 5 Number PATENTS ACT 1953 COMPLETE SPECIFICATION SutJi>, J , . ; LiiL'ti, Hated OoOO+ CO • :■<!! * fPJ 'yjTD IMPROVEMENTS IN WOOL CLEANING BEATER MEANS I/VP? RONALD THOMAS ANDERSON, an Australian citizen of 444A Geelong Road, West Footscray, in the State of Victoria, Comrr.onwealth of Australia do hereby declare the invention for which l^pac pray that a Patent may be granted to me/KS? and the method by which it is to be performed, to be particularly described in and by the following statement: This invention relates to beater means for the cleaning of wool by a beating process, and is a compan ion application to Application No. 197566 , and the contents of the specification accompanying that application are imported hereinto by way of reference. In the. Australian Patent Nos. 403108, 403109 and 403110 in the name of Hardy Wool Co. Pty. Ltd. (the Australian rights of which were assigned to Runnymede Limited), there were described various means for the beating of wool. However, although these machines have been generally satisfactory for some wools, they are inefficient for certain other wools, and it is the object of this invention to provide improvements where by wool will be more effectively beaten or scrubbed in a wool cleaning machine. When unclean wool is to be cleaned, quite frequently the wool is itself partly embodied in coherent debris, and one of the objects of this invention is to effectively release the wool from such debris. In one aspect, this invention is characterised in that said fingers are spaced further from the grid at the infeed end of the apparatus than at other local ities between said infeed and discharge ends. In one embodiment of this invention, the beater comprises a drum having a plurality of helically exten 197567 ding beater finger support bars each supporting a plurality of helically spaced fingers thereon which project outwardly from the bars in a radial direction, but the beater rows are so arranged that the fingers 5. of some rows extend outwardly in a radial direction by a greater,amount than the fingers of other rows. An embodiment of the invention is described hereunder in some detail with reference to and is illustrated in the accompanying drawings, in which 10. Fig. 1 is a plan view of wool cleaning apparatus, Fig.. 2 is a diagrammatic elevational section of Fig. 1, . Fig. 3 is a section taken on line 3-3 of Fig. 15. Fig. 4 is a fragmentary elevational section of the infeed end of the apparatus, drawn to a larger scale, and Fig. 5 is a section taken on line 5-5 of Fig. 4. 20. In this embodiment there is provided a housing 10 within which is a rotatable beater drum 11. The lower portion of the wall of the housing 10 comprises a grid 12 formed from axially extending rotatable bars 13 carried for rotation in spacer plates 14, and the 25. end walls of the housing have passing through it a -3- 567 central shaft 15 journalled in bearings carried on a frame 16., external of the housing, and the shaft carries on it the beater drum 11. The beater drum 11 is provided with two discoid end plates 18 and a cylind-5. rical portion 19 extending therebetween, and helically extending finger support bars 20 of angle section extend along the cylindrical outer surface of the beater drum in such a direction that upon rotation of the drum 11, wool carried within the housing drum is pro-10. gressed axially as well as being transported helically or rotationally in contact with the housing walls and the rotatable bars. The inlet chute to the cleaning space between the beater drum and housing is through the infeed end 15. wall 24 of a housing at a relatively high locality. The wool is fed downwardly into the cleaning space at an angle to the direction of travel, and towards the axis of rotation, over an upwardly convex plate 25 (see Fig. 5), the convex shape spreading the wool 2o. as it feeds into the cleaning space. The infeed end 28 of the beater drum 11 has a plurality of circumferentially spaced axially outstanding beater blocks 29 (Fig. 4), and extending rearward- -4- 197567 ly for a short distance from these beater blocks 29, there are a'plurality of short replaceable finger bars 31 which increase in height in a downstream direction and which carry fingers of progressively increasing 5. length away from the infeed end 28 such that the space between the paths of travel of the tips of the fingers and the inner surface of the housing progressively reduces. Thereafter each finger support bar 20 extends along the beater drum 11 and carries fingers of the 10. same length on each bar, but alternate bars have fin gers of different length so that the wool is impacted firstly by relatively lor;g fingers (designated 34) and secondly by relatively short fingers (designated 35). This has the effect of more thoroughly subjecting 15. the wool to a cleaning action, since the wool is able to rotate or "roll" during portion of its traverse around the walls of the housing drum and along the machine. It is important to feed the wool into the machine 20. in a relatively smooth and even stream, and this is achieved by the chute plate 25 being upwardly convex. This improves the flow of wool into the machine such that it is a relatively even thickness flow and thereby is more likely to be pounded by the beater blocks 25. .29 on the end of the beater drum ll1." -5- 1 975 At the discharge end of the machine, the beater drum is of shorter length than the housing drum, so that there is an end space, and a discharge chute extends from the end space. 5. The above embodiment has been described with res pect to a machine having an horizontal axis of rotation of beater drum. However, the machine can also have a vertical axis of rotation of the beater drum and the housing drum can have the rotatable rods extending 10. - around its entire periphery. - 6 - </div>

Claims

<div class="application article clearfix printTableText" id="claims"> i 97567 WHATWf-'CLAIM IS:

1. Wool cleaning apparatus of the type haying rotating beater means which co-operate with a grid, wherein said beater means comprises a drum having fingers extending outwardly from its curved surface, and wool to be cleaned is transported by rotation of said drum from an infeed end of the apparatus to a discharge end of the apparatus, characterised in that said fingers are spaced further from the grid at the infeed end of the apparatus than at other localities between said infeed and discharge ends.

2. Wool cleaning apparatus according to claim 1 further characterised in that said grid comprises members parallel to the axis of beater drum rotation and wherein said fingers are arranged in rows which extend along said drum,

the lengths of said fingers in any one said row increasing progressively away from the infeed end for portion only of the length of that said row.

3. * Wool cleaning apparatus according to claim 2 further characterised in that said fingers extend along said drum in helical rows, and the lengths of said fingers in any one row are the same for portion only of the length of that said row.

• : ' .Jk. i . V>" t w„

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4.

Wool cleaning apparatus according to claim 3 wherein the fingers of some said rows are longer than corresponding fingers of other said rows.

ing to any preceding claim further characterised by beater blocks outstanding from the infeed end of said drum and carried by said drum.

ing to any preceding claim further characterised by an infeed chute at the infeed end of said apparatus, said infeed chute comprising an upwardly convex plate sloping downwardly to and terminating in an infeed end plate of said apparatus, said infeed end plate having walls defining an infeed port through which wool passes from said upwardly convex plate.

7. . Wool cleaning apparatus sub stantially as hereinbefore described with reference to and as illustrated in the accompanying drawings.

5.

Wool cleaning apparatus accord-

6.

Wool cleaning apparatus accord-

WEST-WALKER, McCASE

per:

ATTORNEYS FOR THE APPLICANT

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