Patent ID: 8047130

Claim:
A fruit juice extraction device comprising: a first peeler cup comprising a forward end and a rearward end and comprising a plurality of radially disposed and spaced apart peeling blades partially defining a space for a fruit, the blades comprising interior contours and exterior contours and distal ends defining a shape comprising forwardly disposed lateral arcs, and a top opening and a bottom opening extending toward the first peeler cup rearward end from the lateral arcs; and a second peeler cup comprising a forward end and a rearward end and comprising a plurality of radially disposed and spaced apart peeling blades partially defining the space for the fruit, the blades comprising interior contours and exterior contours and also comprising distal ends defining a shape comprising forwardly disposed lateral arcs, and a top opening and a bottom opening extending toward the second peeler cup rearward end from the later arcs; and a filtering tube disposed within one of the peeler cups and a cutting tip associated with the filtering tube so dimensioned as to extend into the space by a distance in a range between 1.43 to 1.71 times a maximum nominal thickness of peel of the fruit to be peeled in the cups; wherein the shapes are formed such that, when the first and second peeler cups are at a predetermined open position relative to each other and are aligned in a desired relation to gravity, the juxtaposed shapes define top and bottom openings to the space sized such that a whole fruit may drop into the space through a top open area comprising the top openings and a juice-extracted fruit core may drop through a bottom open area comprising the bottom openings, and wherein the size of the bottom openings is effective to retain the whole fruit upon entry of the whole fruit into the space; wherein the second peeler cup comprises: toward its rearward end an extended narrow base rearward region effective to support the whole fruit prior to its entry into the space; a distal straight portion of the respective blades' exterior contours, the straight portion effective to provide a substantially horizontal trajectory for the whole fruit prior to its entry into the space; and an angled region of the respective blades' exterior contours disposed between the extended narrow base rearward region and the straight portion; and wherein the blades of the first and the second peeler cups each comprise an inner contour comprising a more distal, linear loading region and a more rearward, linear extraction region.