Star-Shaped Rotary Conveyor for Crop Wrapping Prevention
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conveyor devices in combine harvesters, such as those described in EP 1 050 206 B1 and EP 0 933 017 A1, suffer from goods winding around the rotary body, leading to jamming and incomplete material release, and scraper plates with elongated holes causing material to get caught, resulting in inefficiencies and increased production costs.
Innovation Solution
A conveyor device with a star-shaped rotary body and drivers positioned in the slipstream of star-shaped elevations, featuring flat peripheral surfaces and radial webs, reduces the tendency for material to wrap and includes arcuate driver guides with specific stripping angles to ensure complete material stripping and flow, while embedded openings and circular disks enhance functionality and reduce clogging.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If conventional rotary conveyors with movable carriers are used, then material transport function is achieved, but material winds around the rotary body causing jamming and incomplete release
Solution Approach 1:
The rotary body is designed with an asymmetric star-shaped cross-section instead of a conventional circular shape. This asymmetric geometry creates specific flow patterns that prevent material from winding around the rotary body, eliminating the jamming problem while maintaining conveying efficiency
Solution Approach 2:
Instead of using movable carriers that protrude outward (conventional design), the invention inverts the approach by creating inward-facing star-shaped elevations on the rotary body surface. This inversion changes the material interaction from carrier-based transport to surface-guided flow, preventing wrapping
2Ease of operation
If scraper plates with elongated holes are used, then material stripping is improved, but material gets caught in the holes causing inefficiency
Solution Approach 1:
The invention extracts and eliminates the problematic elongated holes from the scraper plate design. By removing these holes entirely, the design prevents material from getting caught while maintaining effective material stripping through the star-shaped elevation geometry
Solution Approach 2:
The scraper plate design is modified by changing the geometric parameters of the opening - from elongated holes to a different configuration that prevents material entrapment. This parameter change maintains stripping effectiveness while eliminating the clogging issue
3Productivity
If drivers are positioned radially outward, then material transport is achieved, but winding tendency increases significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The driver arrangement is changed from a symmetric radial pattern to an asymmetric configuration that follows the star-shaped elevations. This asymmetric positioning guides material flow along predetermined paths, preventing random winding while maintaining transport functionality
Solution Approach 2:
The star-shaped elevations act as intermediary elements between the drivers and the material. These elevations guide the material flow in a controlled manner, mediating the interaction between the radially positioned drivers and the conveyed material to prevent wrapping
Data Source
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AI summary
The agricultural working machine has a conveying device (11) for transporting and loosening plant element. The conveying device has a hollow body (12) with a close metal surface (13), an actuator (28) and a stripping element (37). The actuator is supported in excentric manner within the hollow body to rotate against the rotary axis (27) and extends radially moving through an actuator guide (31), which is fitted on the metal surface.