Patent ID: 7458161

Claim:
A hand-held horticultural rotary cutting device comprising a body, a rotor which is housed in the body adjacent an opening therein, and is journalled upon it for rotation about an axis, and a powered drive mounted to the body for rotationally driving the rotor, the rotor having exactly two paddles each having a leading edge forming a radially extending cutter exposed to the exterior of the body by virtue of the aforementioned opening so that the cutters are contactable with material to be cut, each paddle forming at least 180 degrees of a shallow pitched helix and having a trailing edge, the leading edge of each paddle overlapping the trailing edge of the other and so leading it as the rotor turns, each paddle having a collection surface which is inclined along the circumferential direction to its plane of rotation, faces the interior of the body, and follows the cutter as the rotor rotates and each paddle having a vane upstanding from the collection surface, the rotor having a circular outer perimeter and the body having a circular wall which encircles the rotor adjacent its outer perimeter and has an opening leading to a substantially tangential collection channel, so that material cut by the cutter is caused, as the rotor rotates, to ride along the collection surface and so be propelled into a region of the body above the rotor, to be moved rotationally along with the rotor by the vanes, and then to be centrifugally expelled into the collection channel for collection in a receptacle, the device further comprising a plate which is mounted across the opening in the body and is cut away to form multiple static blades which are adjacent the plane of rotation of the cutters, the rotor being journalled in an upper bearing mounted in the body and a lower bearing, on the opposite side of the rotor from the upper bearing, mounted by the aforesaid plate.