Abstract: An apparatus for cleaning trash from cotton lint utilizes a combing cylinder having a plurality of teeth covering its surface and extending therefrom in a manner to release the cotton lint to a cleaning cylinder. The combing cylinder surface moves slower than the cleaning cylinder to comb the lint as it is delivered to the cleaning cylinder. Means are provided to vary the speed of the combing cylinder to match the lint processing parameters, including negating lint combing all together.

Abstract: The lint cleaning system is a modified jet-type lint cleaner that includes a supplemental air control vane. The supplemental air control vane (among other things) segregates discharged foreign materials from incoming supplemental air so that the incoming supplemental air is not contaminated by the discharged materials. The current system also enables a user to more effectively control the volume and the pathway of supplemental air entering the cleaner and thereby optimize the function of the air cleaner.

Abstract: A fiber processing machine includes a roll having a direction of rotation and a clothing for carrying thereon fiber material; a cover partially circumferentially shrouding the roll; an air passage opening provided in the cover; an air guiding element bordering the air passage opening; a support for movably holding the air guiding element for varying a distance between the roll and the air guiding element; a pressure sensor for measuring a static pressure between the cover and the roll; and an arrangement for setting a position of the air guiding element as a function of the pressure measured by the pressure sensor.

Abstract: A device for use with a fiber processing machine is provided. The device has a rotating cylinder, a fiber material feeding device that feeds fibers to the cylinder, an air duct that extends essentially tangential to the cylinder in a fiber-removal zone, an airflow creating device coupled to the air duct and creating an airflow in the air duct, and at least two adjustable airflow adjustment elements arranged inside the air duct in the fiber-removal zone.

Abstract: A fiber processing machine includes a clothed roll entraining fiber material thereon; a roll cover circumferentially partially surrounding the roll and defining an annular clearance therewith; a transfer opening provided in the roll cover for admitting fiber material to the roll; a waste discharge opening provided in the roll cover for removing waste from the clearance; a fiber removal opening provided in the roll cover downstream of the waste discharge opening as viewed in the direction of roll rotation; an arrangement for generating an air stream for doffing fiber material from the roll and for discharging doffed fiber material through the fiber removal opening; an arrangement for varying a strength of the air stream at the fiber removal opening; and an arrangement for varying the extent of waste removal through the waste discharge opening.

Abstract: An aeromechanical individualizer for individualizing entities within a fiber sample includes a cylindrical rotating beater wheel, having a non-permeable cylindrical surface and having carding elements, such as pins or wire points, on the cylindrical surface. A cylindrical feed roller and feed plate supply the fiber sample to the beater wheel in the form of a beard at a first point along the rotational path thereof. A nozzle directs a gas flow across the feed plate and the beard such that fibers are dragged from the feed plate into engagement with the carding element. At a second point along the rotational path of the beater wheel there is a doffer for removing entities of the beater wheel. An enclosure surrounds the beater wheel and substantially prevents the ingress or egress of the gas except gas flow which enters via the nozzle at the first point and which exits at the second point.

Abstract: A fiber processing machine includes two oppositely rotated, tangentially cooperating first and second clothed rolls, wherein the first roll is an upstream roll and the second roll is a downstream roll as viewed in a travelling direction of fiber material being entrained by the rolls on fiber-advancing portions thereof. The rolls have a generally horizontal axis of rotation and together define opposite first and second converging gaps. A first carrier is disposed in the first converging gap and partially extends over a circumferential portion of the first and second rolls. A mote knife is mounted on the first carrier and bounds a waste discharge opening situated circumferentially along one of the rolls. The first carrier has a carrier part partially covering the fiber-advancing portion of the first roll; and an additional curved carrier part extends along a circumference of the second roll. The additional curved carrier part defines an air intake gap with the second roll.

Abstract: For improving the cleaning effect of a fibrous material in an opener (1) comprising a rotatable opener roller (2) and blades (3,4) and carding plates (5) cooperating with the peripheral surface of the roller (2), there is provided in the material drawing zone at least one separator element (13) for the air current (14) generated by the rotation of the opener roller (2). The separator element (13) penetrates with a certain angle into the air current (14) and so it allows to deviate away from the opener roller (2) a radially outermost part of the air current (14), which owing to a greater centrifugal action includes residual impurities and cotton flocks still incorporating dirt or not yet opened because they have remained clamped between the teeth of the roller clothing, whereas the radially innermost part of the air current (14), which carries cleaned fibrous material that is lighter, is conveyed towards the outlet (16) for the material. The separator element (13) may be adjustable in position.

Abstract: A cotton harvester having a harvesting head assembly mounted to a chassis of the harvester for generally vertical movement. The harvesting head assembly includes a plurality of harvesting units for removing a commingled mixture of materials including trash and cotton from plants as the harvester is driven across a field, and a cleaning mechanism for receiving and processing the commingled mixture of materials received from the harvesting units thereby separating trash from cotton as the harvester moves across the field. The cleaning mechanism is mounted between the harvesting units and a discharge area on the head assembly to facilitate the flow of cotton materials to a cotton receiving receptacle and increase the holding capacity of the receptacle by eliminating trash that normally flows thereto as a result of the harvesting operation.

Abstract: An apparatus for opening and cleaning fiber material includes consecutively arranged first, second and third clothed rolls each having a clothing thereon. The second clothed roll cooperates with the first clothed roll as a doffer and opening roll and the third clothed roll cooperates with the second clothed roll as a doffer and opening roll. The centrifugal forces generated at peripheries of the clothed rolls increase from roll to roll from the first clothed roll. There is further provided a fiber feeder for advancing the fiber material towards the first clothed roll. Covers closely surround the respective first, second and third clothed rolls which have at least approximately identical diameters. Waste discharge openings are provided in the cover of each clothed roll, and a mote knife bounds each waste discharge opening.

Abstract: A safety apparatus for controlling access to a work object having an active mode and a passive mode, the apparatus having a lock assembly for obstructing access, in a first condition, and alternatively permitting access, in a second condition, to the work object; a detector for detecting when the work object is in the active mode and in the passive mode; and a control system operably interconnecting the lock assembly and the detector operable when the work object is in the active mode, as detected by the detector, to maintain the lock assembly in the first condition and when the work object is in the passive mode, as detected by the detector, to maintain the lock assembly in the second condition.

Abstract: The cleaning machine for fiber material has an opening roller provided with clothing. The cleaned fibers are again removed from the clothing into a suction chamber by means of a screening member containing a screening wall provided with a nose. The invention improves the clean separation or detachment of the fiber material from the clothing in comparison with the known arrangements, avoids collection of fibers at the nose of the screening member, and, in particular, requires a smaller quantity of suction air in the suction duct leading away from the suction chamber. To achieve this the mutual spacing of the screening wall and roller envelope or outer surface increases in a direction away from the nose in the direction of rotation of the opening roller towards the rearward end of the screening wall.

Abstract: An improved cotton cleaner incorporating a cleaning mechanism utilizing successive stages of saw-tooth drums and transverse bars. The physical orientation of individual cotton balls is controlled to assure exposure of at least two sides of each cotton ball to the cleaning action.

Abstract: Cotton in an extractor-feeder is passed through three scrubber cylinders. The first two having grid bars of a regular 1/4 or 5/16 inch spacing and the third having grid bars at about twice the regular, or 1/2 inch spacings. Any locks of seed cotton in the trash from the third scrub cylinder are reclaimed by reclamation saw which also reclaims any cotton slung off by a main saw cylinder. Also dust is removed by a suction connected into the housing.

Abstract: A cotton lint cleaner having a number of new and unique features. The lint cleaner uses a common air stream laden with cotton to be cleaned through a moving screen and then through feed rollers to a cylindrical saw, where a centrifugal air flow doffing impeller doffs the cleaned cotton from said saw, for discharge from the device. Special spring biased feed bars are also a part of this invention. Additional features include special grid bars, special settling and collection chambers, guide vane structure, a rotating paddle wheel vacuum lock, an adjustable vacuum valve control, and filtering and discharging of the exhaust air flow through a cover over the operating drive for the over-all machine in order to exclude contamination from the outside air of said drive components. Special tension mountings for the grid bars are also disclosed.

Abstract: A trash by-pass panel is pivoted to the reclamation chute wall in a cotton gin burr and stick machine such that it may be opened to allow heavier trash to be excluded from further processing, thereby increasing the efficiency of the cotton cleaning.

Abstract: A cotton cleaning attachment for a cotton scraper has a separator section mountable at a discharge end of a conventional scraper so as to receive scrap cotton, dirt and debris downwardly under the force of gravity from the discharge end of the scraper and separating the dirt and debris from the cotton. A transfer section, also mountable on the scraper and disposed downstream of the separator section, removes the cleaned cotton from the separator section, and causes the cotton to be fed to a subsequent stage of handling for further processing.

Abstract: A cotton lint cleaner having a number of new and unique features. The lint cleaner uses a common air stream laden with cotton to be cleaned through a moving screen and then through feed rollers to a cylindrical saw, where a centrifugal air flow doffing impeller doffs the cleaned cotton from said saw, for discharge from the device. Special spring biased feed bars are also a part of this invention. Additional features include special grid bars, special settling and collection chambers, guide vane structure, a rotating paddle wheel vacuum lock, an adjustable vacuum valve control, and filtering and discharging of the exhaust air flow through a cover over the operating drives for the overall machine in order to exclude contamination from the outside air of said drive components. Special tension mountings for the grid bars are also disclosed.

Abstract: An apparatus for removing trash from seed cotton. The comingled seed cotton/trash are conveyed by air velocity into the housing of the apparatus wherein they are made to follow the outer curve of the top panel until arrested by a spiked rotating beater cylinder having a first grid section disposed thereabout for expelling the rushing air and the entrained minute pieces of trash. As the beater directs the remaining portion of cotton/trash toward a rotating primary saw drum, the larger pieces of trash gravitate into a bypass hopper from which certain structure reclaims the seed cotton which may be comingled therewith. The reclaimed seed cotton is redirected onto the primary saw drum which also engages and holds the seed cotton being thrown thereon by the beater cylinder. A portion of the seed cotton impaled upon the primary saw drum has considerable intermediate size pieces of trash comingled therewith.

Abstract: This invention relates to a unique method of combing stripper harvested seed cotton in order to facilitate the removal of trash components such as large sticks and burrs.Further it relates to a coarse-tooth, reverse pitch, combing saw cylinders, turning with opposite rotation to a fine-toothed combed saw cylinder such that the saw teeth on the adjacent side of the two cylinders move in the same direction without overlap.Further it relates to the combing action of two adjacent saw cylinders of the same nominal diameter operating at different speeds such that sticks, burrs, and other large trash components are held momentarily by the slower rotating teeth of the combing cylinder as the seed-cotton attached to the combed cylinder passes through the combing area between the cylinders.