Abstract: Pruning plants that exude sticky sap may leave pruners gummed up and barely useable. Cleaning edged cutting tools presents injury risks to nursery and farm workers, so a need for rapid and effective cleaning machines exists. This pruner cleaning machine includes a motorized rotor assembly of scrubber discs facing each other and a helical center brush disposed between them. The scrubber discs include helical ramps and step faces at the ends of these ramps which conform to the ends of the helical scrubber, so that the spacing between the scrubber discs may be accurately controlled by the number of turns of the helical scrubber, including partial turns. The rotor may be reconfigured for various types of pruners by selecting from among various lengths of helical scrubbers. Properly configured, by using this machine and its inventive scrubbing rotor, gummed up pruners may be cleaned in seconds.

Abstract: A pruner cleaning machine scrubs gummy sap and foreign matter from pruner blades inserted into its cleaning chamber. The machine includes a motor turning a drive shaft having scrubbers coupled thereon. The scrubbers have scrubbing surfaces facing each other and a scrubber barrel resides between the scrubbers. The motor is electronically controlled to provide adjustable regimens of duty cycles of scrubbing in forward and reverse directions and various speeds, and status lights may indicate power available, selected options, and in-process phases and completion of a cleaning regimen.

Abstract: The invention is a convenient and portable device for cleaning and sharpening cutting tools for gardening such as pruners, clippers, snips, or shears when these have become fouled from working on plants which exude gummy residue or sticky sap when cut. The device includes a reservoir for holding cleaning solutions, at least one motor driving a planetary or epicyclic gearing or slippable roller drive mechanism, to rotate at least one disc so that bristles of the disc precess along roulette paths which include a hypocycloid, an epicycloid, a hypotrochoid, or an epitrochoid. A motor switch detects the insertion of a gardening cutting tool and turns on the motor after a predetermined delay and for a predetermined duration. The cutting tool must be removed for the switch to be reset. The cleaning machine can be powered by internal batteries or external power.