IMPROVEMENTS APPARATUS FOR TREATING FLOUR, GRAINS, AND THE LIKE
Year: 1880

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Frank Wirth at the Office of the
Commissioners of Patents on the 20th September 1880. A communication
from Heinrich Seck, of Frankfort on the Main, in the Empire of Germany.
FRANK WIRTH, of the Firm of Wirth and Company, Patent Solicitors, at
Frankfort on the Main, in the Empire of Germany.
"IMPROVEMENTS
APPARATUS FOR TREATING FLOUR, GRAINS, AND THE LIKE." [A communication
from Heinrich Seck, of Frankfort on the Main, in the Empire of Germany.]
IN
This Invention has reference to that description of apparatus for dressing,
screening, sorting, or otherwise treating flour, grain, and the like, wherein blades
or beaters revolve inside a screening or bolting cylinder or drum which itself
revolves inside a casing, so that the flour, grain, or other substance to be treated,
on being introduced at one end of the cylinder is thrown by the blades against
the screening surface thereof. Such screening cylinders have heretofore been made
of polygonal shape, with the screening surfaces forming the regular sides of the
polygon.
According to one of the present improvements, instead of constructing such
screening surfaces as the regular sides of the polygon as heretofore, they are placed
at greater or less inclination to such position, that is to say, the distance of the one
longitudinal edge of each polygonal side from the centre of the drum is greater than
the distance of the other edge, the inclinations of the several sides being all in
one and the same direction, so that a series of steps are formed at their junctions.
By this arrangement the meal or grain, which is thrown in more or less tangential
direction from the revolving beaters towards the inner surface of the drum, instead
of meeting such surface at a very acute angle, as is the case with the ordinary
polygonal drum surface, will impinge almost perpendicularly thereon, in con-
sequence of which the screening action will be much more effective, and the wear
of the screening surface will be considerably decreased.
When constructing the surfaces of such polygonal screening drums of wire gauze
or open fabric, the drum is by preference constructed as follows:-The frame-work
of the drum consists of four strong longitudinal tubular rods fixed to the end discs,
between each two of which rods are other rods of less strength, partly surrounded
by a concave bar at a slight distance from the rod. The strong rods have pins
projecting from their outer sides, on which is secured the one edge of a length of
the wire gauze or open fabric. The length of fabric is then passed under the

page_text: inner edge of the next concave bar, and outwards through the narrow space
between the said bar and its rod, from the outer side of which the fabric is then
led round the inner edge of the next strong tubular rod, to the pins of which its
other edge is then secured. By this means the surface of the wire gauze or fabric
assumes the before described angular position to the polygon.
Another part of the Invention relates to the casings of apparatus of the kind
above described. Such casings have, according to a previous Invention of my
correspondent, been made of cylindrical form with helical channels on its inner
surface, so that by imparting a slow rotary motion to the casing, the meal, grain,
or other substance that has passed through the screening drum into the casing, was
caused by the helical channels to travel towards one end and was there delivered
into a shoot. According to the present improvement the casing is made stationary,
and only the lower part thereof is of cylindrical form, and at the lowest point
thereof is a longitudinal channel or trough in which a longitudinal shaft having a
screw blade or worm is made to revolve. On the outer surface of the screening
drum are one or more longitudinal brushes, that are made by the rotation of the
==drum-to-brush against the surface of the casing, so as to convey any meal or grain
lodging thereon into the trough, in which it is conveyed to a delivery shoot at one-
end of the casing by the revolving screw blade or worm. It will be understood
that this construction-of-casing-is-applicable_of_screening drums generally
-independently_of_the_before_described construction of the screening drum.