Monolithic Juice Extractor Rotor for Clean Stone-Safe Separation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing rotor designs for machines extracting juice and puree from food products with stones face challenges such as stone breakage, inefficient pulp removal, and difficulty in cleaning and sanitizing, especially at high rotation speeds.
Innovation Solution
A monolithic rotor design with a conical or cylindrical hub and blades arranged in a specific matrix pattern, featuring concave portions and staggered blade positions to facilitate a helical motion of the food product, thereby maximizing extraction efficiency and ease of cleaning.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If the rotor rotates at high speed (2000-3000 r.p.m. and above) to increase productivity, then extraction efficiency improves, but the risk of breaking stones increases and waste products contain more adhered pulp
Solution Approach 1:
The blade edges are designed with rounded geometry rather than sharp edges, creating a localized quality difference that reduces impact force on stones while maintaining effective pulp separation at high rotation speeds
Solution Approach 2:
The rotor blades are designed to create a rolling motion dynamic that moves stones along the sieve surface rather than impacting them directly, allowing high-speed operation without stone breakage
2Productivity
If the rotor rotates at high speed to increase productivity, then extraction efficiency improves, but waste products contain a big amount of pulp that has not been extracted
Solution Approach 1:
The blade surfaces are designed with specific geometric characteristics that create localized friction and rolling contact with stones, ensuring thorough pulp removal while allowing stones to pass cleanly to the waste outlet
Solution Approach 2:
The rounded blade edges and curved surfaces create a rolling rather than sliding contact with stones, maximizing the surface area of contact between stone and blade/sieve, thereby improving pulp removal efficiency even at high speeds
3Ease of operation
If the rotor is constituted by many parts screwed or connected each other to facilitate cleaning, then ease of cleaning improves, but problems occur when working at high speeds of rotation
Solution Approach 1:
The rotor is designed as a monolithic body where blades are integrally formed with the hub, eliminating separate parts and connections. This unified structure ensures reliability at high speeds while maintaining cleanability through smooth surfaces and accessible geometry
Solution Approach 2:
Instead of designing a modular rotor that can be disassembled for cleaning, the invention inverts the approach by creating a seamless monolithic structure where cleaning is achieved through the overall geometry and surface accessibility rather than part disassembly
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
The rotor design achieves high extraction yields and speeds while minimizing stone breakage and pulp residue, allowing for efficient cleaning and sanitization without disassembling parts, even at high rotation speeds.
Implementation Method 1
During its rotation about the rotation axis, the rotor applies a centrifugal force to the treated product that causes the same to selectively pass through the sieve
Data Source
Figure 1~2
Figure 3~4
Figure 5~6
AI summary
A rotor (8) for a machine (1) for extracting puree or juice from a food product of vegetable or animal origin, being provided with a hub (11) having an external conical, or cylindrical, surface (13) from which a plurality of blades (6, Bn,m) protrudes, in which the hub (11) and the blades (6) form a monolithic body obtained with a process selected from: welding of the blades to the hub, machining of the blades and the hub from a monolithic semi-finished product. The blades (6) are arranged according to a matrix Bn,m where n is the number of blades (6) in the longitudinal direction (9) and m is the number of blades (6) along a circumferential direction, where n> ≤2 and m≤2; the blades Bn,m have at least a concave portion with a concavity oriented in the direction of rotation (10) of the rotor (8). The hub (11) has an axial length (L) and each of the blades Bn,m has an axial length A less than L/n with n≤ 2.