Claims
- 1. A ballast cleaning machine to clean ballast from railway road beds comprising:
- (a) a frame mounted on trolleys;
- (b) chain excavating means mounted on said frame and extending downwardly therefrom for excavating material from a railway bed;
- (c) sorting means comprising an endless chain conveyor which comprises two chains made up of a plurality of links, each link being equipped with a side wall projecting outwardly therefrom, said sorting means further comprising, between pairs of opposing side walls, a foraminous floor and a foraminous partition parallel to, and spaced apart from, said floor, said floor and said partition being fixed to the opposing side walls, said partition retaining oversized material while allowing wanted ballast and smalls to pass therethrough, said floor retaining wanted ballast while allowing smalls to pass therethrough;
- (d) smalls conveyor means disposed radially within said endless conveyor for receiving the smalls from said sorting means;
- (e) discharge means for receiving the oversized material and smalls and discharging the samd from said machine; and
- (f) distribution means for receiving said wanted ballast and distributing the same onto the railway bed.
- 2. A machine as claimed in claim 1, wherein said distribution means comprises at least a slidable box.
- 3. A machine as claimed in claim 1, wherein said distribution means comprises at least a tiltable gate.
- 4. A machine as claimed in claim 1, further comprising a delivery conveyor to deliver smalls from the smalls conveyor means to the discharge means.
- 5. A machine as claimed in claim 4, wherein said delivery conveyor has at least one operating position which is transverse to the smalls conveyor means.
- 6. A machine as claimed in claim 1, wherein each of said floors and partitions comprises a mesh portion fixedly attached between said pairs of opposing side walls.
- 7. A machine as claimed in claim 1, wherein side walls attached to adjacent links are not attached directly to each other.
Priority Claims (1)
| Number |
Date |
Country |
Kind |
| 83440 A/84 |
Nov 1984 |
ITX |
|
Parent Case Info
This application is a continuation of application Ser. No. 799,834, filed Nov. 20, 1985, now abandoned.
This invention concerns a machine to restore railway road beds with a continuous endless-conveyor riddle. To be more exact, the invention concerns a machine to restore railway road beds which is able to take the material of such road beds from below the railway line in a known manner and to riddle it so as to discard debris which is either of too large or too small a piece size and to re-employ cleaned middlings of the prescribed mesh size.
Such riddling is carried out by a continuous endless riddle, which consists, for instance, of endless chains supporting riddle means such as segments or portions of a mesh.
Embodiments are known which are intended to perform riddling of the ballast forming the railway road bed with removal of material of too large a mesh size (blocks, clips, logs, etc.) and of smalls (earth, mud and clay) and with the recovery of middlings of a suitable size, that is, re-usable materials.
For instance, Swiss Pat. No. 309.855 discloses such a machine, which comprises an endless excavator chain having a system of blades able to lift the material from below the railway line. This recovery system lets the material drop into a hopper from which a conveyor belt takes the material to a vibrator riddle. This vibrator riddle includes at least two riddling stages, which enable the smalls, and therefore unusable materials, generally consisting of earth or other impurities, to be separated. Such separated debris is sent to removal conveyors.
This known machine entails the great drawback of very considerable noise owing to the action of the vibrator; such noise has an adverse effect on the machine operators, and the machine also requires riddling to be carried out in several stages by means of a vibrator riddle and does not permit prior separation of materials of unusable large piece sizes. In particular, large materials such as pieces of sleepers, branches, clips and other objects may be mixed with the ballast and have to be sent to the riddle. Such large materials reduce the efficiency of the riddling. In fact, such large materials can cause problems at the riddle and at the means which discharge materials from the riddle.
Patent DE-C-195.712 discloses a riddle consisting of a series of riddling conveyor belts arranged one within another. Such conveyors include a common tract and then diverge to convey materials of different piece sizes to different discharge means; the conveyors are then re-united but at all times are arranged one within another. This device forms a riddle by itself and is not applied to any machine in particular.
Patent FR-A-2.413.501 discloses a machine equipped with a scraper chain which passes below the rails. This chain delivers materials to a vibrator riddle of a static type, and the re-usable materials are sent once more by a conveyor onto the road bed, while the debris is discharged by another conveyor belt.
Patent GB-A-860,435 discloses a machine which re-makes the railway track and comprises means able to remove and reposition the sleepers. The ballast is removed by a series of excavators with bladed chains working by frontal action and positioned below the machine. These excavators work not only between the rails but also outside them. As is obvious, the metalling can only be moved after removal of the sleepers.
Patent BE-A-650.096 discloses a riddle of a type with riddling chains, the riddle being equipped with supplementary chains to bring to the surface pieces which could become jammed in the chain links, thus obviating damage to the pulleys or other like problems. This invention too concerns a riddle opeating on its own without being applied in particular to railway machines.
Patent DE-A-3.120.005 discloses a device to separate materials into pieces of small, medium and large sizes; this separation is performed by riddling chains.
Patent FR-A-2.305.544 discloses a track repair machine with a bladed pick-up chain passing under the railway line. The metalling thus taken is sent to a riddle of a traditional type equipped with riddling grills. The material to be re-used is separated from the debris and sent to a distributor case, which by means of a system of movable partitions can distribute the metalling crosswise tot he line as required and in a various manner.
One purpose of the present invention is to improve the working of such type of machine.
Indeed,the invention provides for a direct separation of materials of a large piece size, and such materials are retained while travelling on the conveyor riddle without affecting the continuous discharge of the smalls and of the middlings to be recovered while riddling is in progress. At the end of the riddle path the materials of a large piece size are discharged directly.
In a first embodiment the material brought up by the excavator chain, which is of a known type, is discharged through a hopper, also of a known type, onto the endless conveyor riddle, which takes the larger material unable to pass through the mesh to an end station where such material is discharged onto a removal conveyor; this conveyor may serve processing units such as crushers, which make such material usable.
The recoverable middlings having an intermediate piece size pass through the outer mesh of the continuous riddle and are retained on an inner riddle, which too may be solidly fixed to the chain or conveyor constituting the riddle, or which may be an independent riddle surface.
Instead, the smalls drop through this inner riddle onto a conveyor, by which such smalls are sent to the removal conveyor which also discharges the large sized materials; alternatively the smalls can be discharged separately, whereas the large material may possibly be processed for further use, as we said earlier.
Thus the riddle retains only the middlings to be re-used. This fraction of the material with the prescribed mesh size is discharged at a return segment of the endless conveyor riddle. In fact, such middlings to be recovered are allowed to fall from this return segment owing to the force of gravity and drop through the mesh of the outer riddle surface.
Moreover, the reciprocal distancing of the links of the riddle at the bend where they are wound about their transmission pulley facilitates the departure of the middlings.
Such middlings fall onto an appropriate conveyor, by which they are delivered to distributor means; this latter means can lay the middlings in a required, adjustable manner in the central zone of the machine and/or in a lateral zone of the machine.
An essential feature of this invention is therefore the performance of a direct separation of the material having too large a piece size. In this way any ballast which is too big and any foreign bodies such as logs, pieces of sleepers, clips, etc. are separated at the beginning and are discharged at one end of the conveyor riddle without passing through such riddle.
Vibrators positioned along the path of the conveyor riddle are provided to facilitate separation of the middlings and smalls and are chosen so as to impart a constant, necessary amplitude of vibration to a pre-selected portion of the conveyor riddle.
In particular, these vibrators are arranged to be suitably insulated from the structure of the machine, thus reducing or eliminating the transmission of vibrations and therefore also any excessive noisiness of the machine.
The fact that only a desired portion of the conveyor riddle and therefore only a portion of the material being riddled are made to vibrate entails a drastic reduction of the force required for such vibration and therefore a considerable reduction of the noise of the machine and of the vibrations transmitted. This is particularly the case when riddling is halted.
A second embodiment of the invention provides for the employment of a vibrating riddle cooperating with an endless conveyor riddle, which is positioned in a closed ring about the vibrating riddle. In this second embodiment the ballast is brought upwards by the excavator chain in a known manner and is conveyed further by a conveyor belt up to the continuous endless-conveyor riddle which surrounds the vibrating riddle. Such endless conveyor riddle retains the material of a large piece size and discharges it terminally by the force of gravity, such large material being then removed by known means, such as a conveyor.
The middlings and the smalls drop onto the vibrating riddle, which consists of only one riddling stage and is therefore very light and not noisy. This riddle will therefore comprise only one vibrating mesh or surface, the mesh size of which is chosen to suit the minimum size of the middlings to be recovered. This vibrating riddle retains the middlings, which slide, owing to the slope of the riddle, towards distributor means that deposit such middlings at the center or at the sides of the road bed as required.
Instead, the smalls pass through the lower branch of the endless conveyor riddle without being withheld, such conveyor riddle branch passing below the vibrating riddle, and lastly reach a conveyor which delivers them to the removal conveyor. Such removal conveyor discharges the large size material and the smalls.
The smalls may possibly be discharged separately from the large size material.
In this second embodiment the vibrations imparted to the vibrating riddle are of a low intensity owing to the light structure of the vibrating riddle; moreover, the vibrating riddle is suitably insualted so as to obtain a low transmission of vibrations to the frame of the machine and to the rails.
According to the invention the continuous riddle can be moved forward in jerks or intermittently so as to obtain the desired offtake of material in a manner analogous to that obtained by means of vibrations.
The invention also provides for the continuous endlessconveyor riddle to have a variable speed so as to be able to adjust the speed of movement to suit the time needed for optimum separation of the material along the travel of the conveyor. In fact, such separation time varies according to the nature and dampness of the smalls (earth, mud, clay, etc.).
A first advantage of the invention is that it arranges for direct separation of the materials of a larger piece size picked up by the excavator chain.
A second advantage of the invention is that such materials of a larger piece size do not pass through the riddle; it is therefore possible to employ a riddle having a modest intensity of vibration and therefore producing little noise. Moreover, the possibility of blockages, jamming or accidental damage to the apparatus by such materials of larger sizes is obviated.
Another advantage of the invention lies in the noteworthy structural and constructional simplicity of the machine and the simplicity of actuation and maintenance.
This invention is therefore embodied in a machine to restore railway road beds with a continuous endless-conveyor riddle, the machine comprising a frame on trolleys, an excavator chain means, riddle means with at least one continuous endless-conveyor riddle, discharge means, means to distribute restoration material, and alignment grippers, the machine being characterized in that the continuous endless- conveyor riddle sorts the material with its upper segment alone.
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| Number |
Date |
Country |
| 650096 |
Jan 1965 |
BEX |
| 195712 |
Feb 1908 |
DE2 |
| 3120005 |
Dec 1982 |
DEX |
| 679603 |
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FRX |
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SUX |
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GBX |
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GBX |
| 2148989 |
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GBX |
Continuations (1)
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Number |
Date |
Country |
| Parent |
799834 |
Nov 1985 |
|
Patent Grant
4846282
