IMPROVING THE DESIGN OF THE BRUSH MACHINE FOR GRAIN
Authors: Soldatenko L. , Shipko A. , Shipko I. 
Published: May 2021

The quality of the finished products of flour mills largely depends on the efficiency of grain cleaning equipment, in particular, on those intended for cleaning the grain surface from dense deposits of organic and mineral dust. In modern conditions of an acute shortage of household drinking water, when the use of washing and washer-hulling machines becomes impractical or completely impossible, the role of equipment for dry processing of grain surfaces - scouring and brushing machines - is significantly increasing. Scouring machines separate high-ash dust deposits from the surface of the grain, separate the embryo and bangs, destroy clods of earth commensurate with the grain, and also lead to partial peeling of fruit shells. But they cannot remove dust and microorganisms from the groove of the weevil. This task - in the absence of washing and washer-hulling machines - is solved exclusively by brushing machines. They remove dust and microorganisms from the groove, the remains of dust, embryos and bangs, fruit shells torn by the peeling machines, and reduce the ash content of the refined grain by 0.02 ... 0.03%. And although the efficiency of the brushing machines is less than the efficiency of the scourers, they are irreplaceable at the final stages of cleaning the grain surface. The decisive influence on the efficiency of the operation of brushing machines is created by the technical condition of the working bodies and the size of the working gap between the brush rotor and the brush deck, which should be 4 ... 8 mm. However, over time, the brush surfaces of the rotor and deck will wear out, become dirty, clogged with dust and deform - the bristles get a slope and the working gap increases. In many respects, this is corrected by regulation with a special adjusting mechanism. But its capabilities are limited, and the longer the brush is used, the more often the regulation is required and the less effective it becomes. Specialists from many countries are engaged in the improvement of brush machines: Russia, Switzerland, Poland, etc. An overview of the designs and functional diagrams of machines of various companies, as well as inventions and patents in this area, can contribute to the improvement of the А1-БЩМ-12 brush machine, which is most often used in production lines of domestic enterprises. Invention "Brush machine for cleaning grain surface" for copyright certificate No. 459248 is just about the equipment for cleaning wheat and rye. The aim of the invention is to improve the efficiency of processing the surface ofthe grain by lengthening the path of its friction along the working surfaces of the rotor and the deck and continuous extraction of particles separated from the grain over the entire surface of the deck. For this, the proposed machine has a deck, which consists of a set of cylindrical brush rollers that rotate in mutually opposite directions. Externally, the deck is covered by a sieve shell, which can be made corrugated to increase the grain cleaning effect. The working area is formed by a rotary brush rotor and a brush-roller deck. Rollers of odd numbers rotate in the direction opposite to the direction of rotation of the rotor at half the speed, and rollers of paired numbers rotate at the same speed as odd numbers, but in the same direction as the rotor. Grain in the working area goes through a complex zigzag path, after which it is blown with air and goes outside. To compensate for the wear of the brushes and regulate the size of the working gap, the axes of the rollers on both sides are installed in the radial grooves of the two fixed sidewalls and simultaneously in the inclined grooves of the rotary plates mounted on the cylindrical protrusions of these sidewalls. Since the total surface area of the brush rollers is almost 4 times larger than the deck area of the А1-БЩМ-12 machine, the specific load on the surface of the rollers is significantly reduced, which guarantees a longer and more efficient operation of the brush machine.