US 5,782,677 AGranted

Continuous process blast mill for finishing cast metal parts

OwnerRichard C. Kanouseinventor

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Abstract

A workpiece cleaning mill that is useful for cleaning castings includes a hollow housing that is established by arranging plural elongated manganese flights side-by-side to establish a cylinder, and attaching the flights to opposed entrance and exit rings. A feed conveyor feeds workpieces into the entrance end, and an exit conveyor conveys the workpieces away from the exit end. Media throwers are disposed at each end to throw high-speed cleansing media, such as shot, into the housing. The housing is rotated as the workpieces move, under the influence of gravity and/or following workpieces being fed into the housing, from the entrance end to the exit end while being bombarded with shot. Steel mesh curtains at each end block the media from passing outside of the mill. Spent media falls through perforations in the flights, and the spent media is conveyed back to a media hopper and thence to the media throwers for reuse. Magnetic valves regulate the amount of media thrown by the throwers.

Claims16

Dependent claims

An apparatus for cleaning workpieces, comprising:

a plurality of elongated flights arranged to establish a blast housing defining opposed entry and exit ends, the blast housing defining an inner surface and an outer surface;
at least one drive roller rollably engaged with the outer surface of the blast housing for causing the blast housing to rotate;
at least one support roller rollably engaged with the outer surface of the blast housing;
at least one entrance media thrower juxtaposed with the entrance end and oriented to direct cleansing media into the blast housing;
at least one exit media thrower juxtaposed with the exit end and oriented to direct cleansing media into the blast housing;
at least one entrance curtain juxtaposed with the entrance end to block media from propagating past the entrance curtain;
at least one exit curtain juxtaposed with the exit end to block media from propagating past the exit curtain;
and
an entrance vestibule juxtaposed with the entrance end and an exit vestibule juxtaposed with the exit end, wherein the entrance and exit curtains are respectively suspended in the entrance and exit vestibules, and wherein at least one of the vestibules can be distanced from the blast housing to permit a person to enter the blast housing.

6 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.