The present invention is related to a mill, particularly to a mill juicer for plants such as Agavoideae or sugar canes and alike to obtain their juice.
The object of this invention is to increase the mechanical efficiency of a mill for plants by compensating the misalignment between the shafts of the extraction elements in a mill when the juice of the plants is extracted and at the same time the administered energy is used by the impulse sources.
There are devices to extract juice from plants such as the devices to extract sugar cane juice; examples of these kinds of inventions are known in the document CU22374 (A1), dated Dec. 31, 1996 granted to DISEÑO MECANICO DEL MINISTERIO (CU), this invention is related to the field of sugar cane production, particularly with milling factories and more specifically with mills intended to grind sugar cane to extract its juice from its cells. The objective of the above cited invention consists of the constructive design of a four-rollers mill where its integral setting is achieved in a continuous manner and is controlled from the exterior; to increase the bearing bases and the location possibilities for the fourth roller; to protect the bearings' working zone; optimize the configuration of the original, the lids and the complementary structures, as well as, the mechanical solutions applied to the different mill attachments. This mill possesses devices made up of an oppressing plate, a nucleus and a graduated ring, which make possible the adjusting of the mill's input and output settings, as well as, the feeding entry and the position of the central blade in a continuous form and with a level of precision of up to hundredths of a millimeter. In the mill there have been applied modifications in the original's profile and in the sugar cane side lid by which the surfaces are expanded that function as guide and support to the bearings of the fourth roller, providing an effective range of feeding entries that go from an entry zero up to more than four times the entry setting of the mill, further allowing that the fourth roller be maintained “geared” the whole time to the sugar cane roller, bearings of all its rollers have tightness elements which increase the life of the collars and bearings, and habilitate the recovery of the lubricant without contamination. Further to the modifications applied to the original, the lids and complementary structures, as well as, the coupling forms of said elements among themselves make it possible to simplify, humanize and economize the assembly and disassembly and the maintenance of the mill as a whole.
Other known inventions is the one granted to FIVES-CAIL BABCOCK, in its model of publication number ZA200903905 (A), dated Dec. 14, 2007, which consists of providing a mill that only has 2 press rollers that roll counterclockwise; at least two rollers can have peripheral, annular grooves, intended for the flow of the juice extracts. Both press rollers are found coupled to one another, especially in 52 beams, which allows an efficiency five times greater.
Another example of this kind of devices is taught in the document MXPA03010191 granted to BHAUSAHEB BEPURAO KINAM [IN] dated Mar. 16, 2004, consisting of providing an improvement to the sugar cane mill of two grinding rollers wherein the hydraulic cylinder to load the upper roller is assembled in a pivoting and flexible manner and in the far end of the elevation bearing to allow the upper roller free floating and reduce the possibilities of hydraulic seal failure/considerably system, thus under timely maintenance of the mill, there is a greater productivity.
Also known are similar inventions from the documents ES8606794 (A1) and CU34979(A).
Even though plant extractors are known such as mills for plants such as cane sugar or Agavoideae, said inventions do not contemplate the solution to the problem of compensating the misalignment between the rotating shafts of the rollers that conform them, which generates an irregular wear in the transmission gearing, as well as in the loading bearings known as bushings or metals, wherein the misalignment occurs during the operation of the mill. The aforementioned is observed when a driven gear alters its alignment with respect to the driven gear's shaft, so that the contact between the teeth is carried out in an unsuitable contact zone far from the passing diameter of the teeth, which reduces the efficiency and life of the potency transmission and negatively affects the components due to the operation thereof in unsuitable design conditions. Because of the great torsion demand from the transmission to roll the rollers, driven motors of great size are required and therefore a transmission of proportional dimensions for said motor and operation conditions requires a robust foundation to ensure the operation and application of the energy.
In order to solve the problem of compensating the misalignment of the roller's rotating shafts in a mill for plants such as sugar cane or Agavoideae, a series of groupings that allow the oscillation of the shafts of said rollers during operation has been developed. Said groupings comprise an arrangement of bearing blocks that oscillate the position according to the load in the mill, which allow a certain ball and socket joint-type spherical freedom; moreover, each of the shafts is coupled to an impulse source of independent function and said impulse source is found anchored to the structure by a supporting arm anchored to the impulse source and at the same time allows the oscillation of movement by operation over the shafts of the mill. It is necessary that the teeth have a means to ease their traction to the rollers and lead to material to be grinded to the area of better efficiency of the equipment, for which the machine in the length of the roller has a tilting to form tips that are inserted into the material to be processed and take it to the area of extraction.
The present invention is related to a mill (1) as shown in
Each one of the rollers in the arrangement of rollers (10) as shown in
Each of the arrow spikes (16) as shown in
The support structure (20), as the one shown in
The bearing blocks (30) shown in
The bearing block's carcass (31) has a first tensioning arm (36) as shown in
The cap screw (49) is of suitable features to absorb the efforts of cutting to which it is subject, when the mill (1) is in operation and the rollers' axis floating movements (10). The placing of the cap screw (49) is achieved by known elements such as screws and similar elements which allow the limiting of the coaxial movement in one of its ends, but allows the free movement of both ball and socket joints, thereby the misalignments generated with the functioning of the mill (1) are absorbed by these ball and socket joints, and the rotation of the gear motor (40) over the axis of the exit arrow (not illustrated) is avoided and the application of its torque over the rollers (10) is obtained.
The placing of the bearing blocks (30) at the rollers' bases (21), is carried out by known elements, for example: the bearing blocks of the top roller (10b) have an arrangement which allows their vertical movement through a dock element, which provides strength towards the roller, improving the squeezing of the material; the bearing blocks of the bottom rollers (10a) have some screws (24), which by way of a lid (24a) allow the placing of the rollers (10) to adjust their separation, which when defined the screws are adjusted to maintain the placing as shown in
The arrangement of the hollow arrow-type gear motor (40), comprises an electrical motor (41) like those known in the art and a gear speed reducer (42) that comprises the gear motor carcass (42a), this arrangement with suitable power and speed, passes the power in an independent manner to the rollers, the gear motors have the feature of being hollow arrow (42b), that way the arrow of the roller can be mounted (12) by clamping discs (not illustrated) known in the art.
The structure developed for the mill (1) of the present invention has the objective of compensating for the misalignment between the rotation axes of the rollers (10) when these process the plants to extract the juice contained therein.
In the operation, when the arrangement of rollers (10) is rotating, the material to be processed (not illustrated) is fed between a pair of rollers, specifically between one of the bottom rollers (10a) and the top roller (10b), so that a portion of the material is held by the teeth (13) in the periphery of the rolls (10); due to the shape of the transversal cut (15) created by the teeth pattern (13) the material to be processed is directed towards the center of the length of said rollers (10), since the material is pulled from the longitudinal ends by the tips (15a) from the transversal cut (15) found here and subsequently the traction with the tips (15a) of the teeth (13) which are found consecutively towards the center of the length of the rollers (10). This effect causes the material to be processed be found at the center of the roller (10), reducing the misalignment between the adjacent rollers (10). The shape of the transversal cut (15) directs the extracted juice from the plant towards the center of the roller (10) so that there is a better dispersion of the juice when it is extracted from the fibers, improving its collecting to a more specific zone.
The random movement of the material to be processed entering between the rollers (10) or some predetermined or random misalignment at the time of arranging the mill (1), can generate a misalignment between the axis of rotation of the adjacent rollers (10), and so, the tensioning arm (36, 46) allows the flotation of the rollers' (10) axis alignment, since the ball and socket joints (37, 47) allow the flotation of the axis alignment thanks to the spherical and lineal degrees of freedom of the cap screw (49). With the above, the output axis of the gear motor (40) is always aligned with the axis of the roller (10) and at the same time the anchorage of the suitable gear motor (40) with the supporting structure (20), as the movement of the gear motor (40) will be followed by the bearing blocks (30). In this way, the total power in the output arrow of this gear motor (40) will be applied to the rollers (10) independently of the alignment condition of the rotation axis, eliminating the loss of efficiency by the oscillatory movement of the rollers (10). The bearing blocks (30) are important to allow the flotation of the rollers' (10) rotation axis, as these allow an spherical movement in the support of the roller's arrow (12) when there is a cause of misalignment from its rotation axis, which is achieved by the bearing (35) of each of them being of ball and socket joint-type, so that the carcass (31) of the bearing block (30) by the sliding of the reduction of bearing block (31a) in a linear movement in the sliders (21a) from the roller's base (21). The lubrication of each of the bearings (35) is carried out by a lubricant contained in the carcass (31) and dust covers (34) as the shape of the bellow absorbs the spherical movements of the roller's arrow (12) in the bearing block (30).
The structure of this mill (1) takes advantage of the hardiness of its structure for the application of the power suitably on the rollers (10) as the motors are of a lesser capacity since the total of their power is applied to each of the rollers, reducing the loss of efficiency by a more direct application. The application in each roller allows the installation of a gear motor of less capacity as the total of the given power is applied directly on them, so the energy demand can be reduced for the same number of processing phases in the plants to be processed which allows the installation of a higher number of extraction stages and in this way the juice collection can be increased from a certain volume of material and obtain a final product with better quality indexes.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
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MX/A/2013/009588 | Aug 2013 | MX | national |
Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind |
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PCT/MX2014/000109 | 7/17/2014 | WO | 00 |