Loading patent…
AssigneeFMC Technologies, Inc., Corporation of the State of Delaware
InventorsGregory Schrader, Michael Suter
Estimating the term…
A fruit juice extractor may include a load sensitive coupler coupling a drive motor to a drive shaft during normal operation, and decoupling the drive motor from the drive shaft when the fruit feed members become jammed. The extractor may also include a decoupling detector for detecting decoupling of the load sensitive coupler. The load sensitive coupler may include a rotatable drive hub rotatably carried by a drive shaft and connected to a drive motor, a fixed hub fixed to the drive shaft adjacent the rotatable drive hub, and a shear pin extending between the rotatable drive hub and the fixed hub. The shear pin may couple the rotatable drive hub and the fixed hub together during normal operation and shear to decouple the rotatable drive hub from the fixed hub when the fruit feed members become jammed.
A juice extractor comprising:
A fruit feeder for a juice extractor comprising a plurality of juice extracting positions, the fruit feeder comprising:
A method for juice extraction in a juice extractor comprising a plurality of juice extracting positions and a fruit feeder for feeding fruit thereto, the fruit feeder comprising a drive shaft, a plurality of fruit feed members for feeding fruit to the juice extracting positions based upon rotation of the drive shaft, a drive motor, and a load sensitive coupler coupling the drive motor to the drive shaft during normal operation and decoupling the drive motor from the drive shaft when the fruit feed members become jammed, the method comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.