IMPROVEMENTS IN AND APPERTAINING TO APPARATUS, OR MACHINERY FOR SEPARATING AND PURIFYING MIDDLINGS AND SEMOLINA
Year: 1879

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Louis Fiechter at the Office of the
Commissioners of Patents on the 13th March 1879. A communication from
abroad by John Fiechter-Langmesser, of Basle.
LOUIS FIECHTER, of Liverpool, in the County of Lancaster.
"IMPROVEMENTS
IN AND APPERTAINING TO APPARATUS, OR MACHINERY FOR SEPARATING AND
PURIFYING MIDDLINGS AND SEMOLINA." A communication from abroad by John
Fiechter-Langmesser, of Basle.
This Invention is an improvement on the old centrifugal purifier known as the
Helvetic.
The middlings to be purified are led from a hopper supplied with a feed roller or
other regulator upon a sieve or sifter. From thence (or direct from a silk dresser)
they fall sorted through the hopper of the purifier onto a circular disc or cast iron
plate revolving at a high speed, say, about 200 revolutions per minute. This throws
the middlings according to their specific gravity into two cylindrical compartments
below, centrifugal force operating against a current of air.
The light fluff or dust, small particles of bran, and the like, find the current of
air more powerful than the centrifugal force, and are carried inward into a central
chamber, and are from thence drawn by a fan into the stive room.
The lighter
middlings fall nearly vertically through the current of air into an annular chamber
in which a scraper on an arm of the shaft that drives the disc is continually
revolving and discharges the contents down a spout. The sharps fly outward into
the outer casing and fall down a narrow annular chamber, up which a uniform
continuous current of air is rising from an annular orifice. This carries back any
fluff, bran, or other light matter that may have been carried over by the sharps.
Similarly another current of air, but slightly less powerful from passing through a
contracted opening, can if desired be made to pass up the inner annular chamber
and purify the lighter middlings as they fall. In this manner each grain of
middlings will as it were be sorted over and the most perfect separation of the
lighter and inferior grains as well as the intermixed fluff and bran will take place,
that is, the good sharps that are. thrown by the disc into the outer division fall
down the sloping bottom into one spout. Lighter middlings, and possibly
unseparated bran or fluff with middlings sticking to it, fall into the inner annular
cylinder and out through another spout, while the bran and fluff escape through the
fan. The admission of air to the outer cylindrical chamber is regulated by increasing
or diminishing the area of the annular orifice by raising or lowering the cylinder or

page_text: hopper below, and thus bringing the two edges of the orifice nearer together or
further apart. This enables me to purify different varieties of middlings with equal
success. In the cast iron cover of the purifying cylinder I place glass panes so that
the operation can always be inspected. Where two, three, or more machines are
run together the suction can be further regulated by aid of a star valve in fan case,
and on single cylinder purifiers by a single valve. The disc and inner annular
chamber are movable and adjusted by set screws, and the vertical shaft is driven
preferably by friction. The entire machine is usually made of iron. I sometimes
place a row of these machines with their hoppers immediately below a silk machine,
all driven by one horizontal shaft, with a suction channel below leading to the
stive room.