Cyclonic air-cooled microgravity mill
AssigneeAurora Flight Sciences Corporation
InventorsDaniel W. Dichter, Riley Griffin, Roshan Kalghatgi, Scott McNee
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Disclosed herein is a cyclonic system for performing subtractive machining in microgravity systems. The cyclonic system comprises: an enclosure, a blower, and a debris collection module to collect the debris from the milling machine. The enclosure includes a top plate, a base plate, and a tapered side wall joining the top plate to the base plate. The enclosure defines a chamber to house a milling machine having a cutter tool. The blower generates an airstream that induces a cyclonic airflow to achieve cyclonic separation of debris within the enclosure. In operation, the cyclonic airflow urges the debris from the milling machine toward the base plate and into the milling machine.
Claims21
A cyclonic system for performing subtractive machining in microgravity systems, the cyclonic system comprising:
- an enclosure having a top plate, a base plate, and a tapered side wall joining the top plate to the base plate, wherein the enclosure defines a chamber to house a milling machine having a cutter tool;
- a blower to generate an airstream to be used to induce a cyclonic airflow to achieve cyclonic separation within the enclosure, wherein the cyclonic airflow is configured to urge debris from the milling machine toward the base plate;
- a flow splitter to receive the airstream from the blower and to divide the airstream across a plurality of air conduits, wherein at least two air conduits of the plurality of air conduits are fluidly coupled with the enclosure, each of the at least two air conduits being positioned at a different injection site and configured to inject air tangentially into the enclosure to generate at least a portion of the cyclonic airflow;
- and
- a debris collection module to collect the debris from the milling machine.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.