US443523A - Shredding apparatus for cane - Google Patents

Description

(No Model.)

H. A. HUGHES. SHREDDING. APPARATUS FOR CANE, &G. N0. 443,523.

Patented Dec.- 80, 189.0.

lA/VE/VTOR V ATTORNEY E, which secure the knives, pass through re- UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE.

HENRY ALBERT HUGHES, OF RIO GRANDE, NEIV JERSEY.

SHREDDING APPARATUS FOR CANE, 8L0.

SPECIFICATION forming part of Letters Patent No. 443,523, dated December 30, 1890.

Application filed June 3, 1889. Serial No. 812,982. (No model.)

cane prior to diffusion, but which may also be applied to the disintegration of dye-stuffs, licorice, and other substances from which extracts, and so forth, may be obtained by diffusion processes.

My invention more particularly is an improvement upon the construction of a cane shredding or disintegrating apparatus described and claimed by me in another application for Letters Patent now pending, Serial No. 258,968, filed December 27, 1888, and has for its object the reduction of the cane or other material to a much finer state of disintegration.

The invention consists in the arrangement of two rotary cylinders carrying knives so arranged and disposed that the cane or other material, after being disintegrated by one cylinder, is subjected to the action of the second cylinder, and so still more finely shredded, and in the relative arrangement of the knives upon said cylinders, all as hereinafter more particularly set forth.

In the accompanying drawings, Figure 1 is a longitudinal vertical sectional view of my shredding apparatus on the line X- X of Fig. 2. Fig. 2 is a plan view, portion being broken away on the line Y Y of Fig. 1.

Similar letters of reference indicate like parts.

A is a supporting'frame, in which are suitable bearings B for the horizontal shaft 0,

on which shaft the knife-carrying cylinder D,

is fixed. The body of said cylinder is made of solid metal and has two flat sides, against which the knives G are clamped between said sides and the segmental portions'F. The bolts cesses in the backs, so that as the protruding g edges of the knives wear away the bolts E may be loosened and the knives set forward. The

lies in a plane produced through the chord of the arc of the boundary'circle of the cylinder. The knife-supporting cylinderD is disposed in an opening in the horizontal supporting-frame A, upon which frame rests the cross-bar I. The bolts J pass through openings in the ends of said bar and through elongated slots K in frame A. Upon the block I is secured a fixed plate L. Passing through the upward flange N of the frame A is a set-screw M, which bears against the rear side of the bar I. By loosening the bolts J and suitably moving the set-screw N the block I may be adjusted with its edges nearer to orifartherfrom the path of travel of the knifeec ge.

R is an inclined slide, which may be set nearer to or farther from the knife-cylinder by means of the set-screws S.

Disposed above the cylinder D is a similar cylinder D, provided with knives G, secured by bolts E and so clamped between the body of the cylinder and the segmental portions F. The cylinderD' rotates in hearings in aframe A, similar to frame A, and on said frame rests a block 1, similar to block I, adjusted with bolts J, similar to bolts J, and adjusted by screws M ,similar to screws M. The general arrangement of the cylinder D and its adjacent portions is similar to that of the cylinder D in the corresponding portion. The inclined slide R is like the slide R and is adjusted in like manner by bolts S. Above the cylinder D is a hopper O, at the bottom of which is a sliding gate P,adj usted by means of the handle Q. The n1aterialsuch as -s ugar-caneto be operated upon being first cut into small pieces, is placed in the hopper corner or edge of the plate L, the eifect of the shred it, and this is due not merely to the position of the knife upon the cylinder, but also to the extent of the clearance of the edge of the knife beyond the cylintier-periphery. If the knife is set out too far, it operates to cut off pieces of the material and not to shred it. It, 011 the other hand, it be set with too small clearance, the material is apt to pack in the angle between the knife-blade and cylinder-surface-that is,below the knifeedge-and in such case the knifeedge no longer exerts anyshreddin g effect, but simply turns the pieces over and over as it passes them. It is of course impossible to state any invariable distance to which the knife-edge must be set out in order to produce the best shredding effect, because that will depend in large measure upon the proportion of the knife-blades and cylinders that may be used in any given case. I have, however, described the knife-blade as adjustable in the cylinder, and a few trials with the blades set at differrent points will in any given case quickly show the best operating position.

Referring now to the condition when the knife-blade is placed so close to the cylinder as that the material packs underneath it, it will be obvious that a limit is here set to the capacity of a machine containing only a single cylinder for producing finelydisintegrated cane, for example. New, I have found that there are many substances which it is desirable to shred to a great degree of fineness, so as to allow the extraction of certain materials from them by the ditfusion in water at a low temperature, and I have also found that with a single cylinder it is impracticable to bring them to the necessary degree of fineness. It is of great advantage to be able to disintegrate such materials, so that diffusion may replace the processes now employed for obtaining extracts from them. Take, for example, logwood, from which the dye is ordinarily ext acted by digesting the chips at a high temperature in a closed vessel. The extraction of the dyestuff is not only expensive, but the material itself comes out impure and mixed with resins and other undesirable substances. So, also, in the case of sugar-cane or sorghum, especially when the latter is diffused by the process invented by me, wherein the shredded cane is placed in baskets, which baskets are successively subjected to the action of independent bodies of hot water in a series of successive vessels, the water dissolving the sugar from the cane containcd in the baskets, and thus becoming more and more dense in each vessel until a given density is reached in each. I have found that by increasing the fineness of the shredding of the cane I may practically double the capacity of each basket, and thus increase the capacity of the battery, reduce the amount of water required proportional to the weight of the cane, and thus obtain a denser juice.

I have discovered that I can reduce cane or other material to almost any degree of fineness by subjecting it to the action of successive cutting-cylinders, provided the knives in each successive cylinder have a less clearance beyond the eylinder-surface than the knives of the im m ed iately preceding cylinder; or, to put it another way, I have found that although a knife having a certain small clearance will become choked, and so rendered inoperative, if caused to act directly upon the cut-up cane, it will not so choke if the cane be first disintegrated by a cylinder the knives of which are set at a certain greater clearance. Thus, to illustrate, in once instance I have found that with a single shredding-cylinder having the knives set with their edges one-eighth inch distant from the cylindersurface and running at eighteen hundred revolutions a minute I could shred about forty tons of cane in twenty-two hours, the cylinder being provided with two knives. Reducing the clearance of these knives to one-sixteenth of an inch, the yield of the machine fell almost to nothing, and it became very soon clogged; but I found on first operating upon the material with a cylinder having its knives set at one-eighth-inch clearance and then subjecting it to the action of a second cylinder having its knives at onesixteenth-inch clearance I could maintain the original rate of output and also secure the desired fineness of disintegration. By again repeating the shredding operation, using a cylinder with knives set at still smaller clearance, I can shred the material still finer, while still maintaining the yield. The construction shown in the drawings is intended only as one embodiment of my invention, as I do not limit myself to cylinders of the precise construction and arrangement of those here shown. It will be observed that the knives G of the cylinder D are shown as having about twice the clearance of the knives G of the cylinder D, and that the blocks I and I are set with reference to the cylinders D and l) to leave a space or interval between the respective blocks and cylinders corresponding to the extent of projection of the knives. Any desired means of rotating the cylinders may be employed. I here illustrate a belt (I, rotating the cylinder D and a belt from the shaft of cylinder D communicating with the shaft of cylinder D for rotating the last-named cylinder, both cylinders revolving in the same direction, as indicated by the arrows l. and 2.

I elaim- 1. The combination of two rotary cylinders, each of uniformly-circular periphery, blades disposed with their edges longitudinally the surfaces of said cylinders and having their bodies lying in planes passing tln'ough'ehords of arcs of said cylinders, and supports disposed in proximity to said cylinders, the edge of the blade on one cylinder being set out from the surface thereof a certain distance and the edge of blade on the other cylinder being set out from the surface thereof a certain relatively less distance, substantially as described.

2. The combination of two rotary cylinders, each of uniformly-circular periphery, blades disposed with their edges longitudinally the surfaces of said cylinders and having their bodies lying in planes passing through chords of arcs of said cylinders, and supports disposed in proximity to said cylinders, the said cylinders being disposed one below the other, so that the material after being operated upon by the blade of one cylinder may fall by gravity in front of the second cylinder, and the edges of the blade on one cylinderbeing set out from the surface thereof a certain distance and the edge of the blade on the other cylinder being set out from the surface thereof a certain relatively less distance, substantially as described.

HENRY ALBERT HUGHES. Witnesses:

JOSEPH WELDoN, W. B. MILLER.

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