Planting – Broadcasting – Including powered tiller
Reexamination Certificate
1999-03-05
2001-02-13
Batson, Victor (Department: 3671)
Planting
Broadcasting
Including powered tiller
C172S125000, C172S060000, C221S222000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06186083
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
In my U.S. Pat. No. 5,511,497 I disclosed a digger for facilitating the application of a material such as a supplement to a mushroom bed. As disclosed therein, the digger includes a rotating shaft having a plurality of outwardly extending tines which dig into the mushroom bed as the digger is being pulled longitudinally over the bed. The shaft is mounted in a housing or shroud which contains most of the other elements of the digger, including the motorized drive assembly for the shaft. A compartment containing the materials to be applied is also connected to the shroud and includes various hoses which lead from the compartment. Air is utilized to dispense the material from the compartment by feeding the air through tubing into a manifold at the top of the compartment. The manifold has a plurality of individual discharge hoses each having a flow control valve. Each hose leads to a head at the bottom of the compartment. The top of each head includes openings which function as a venturi opening to draw the supplement material into the head and then the supplement/air flow continues through a set of tubes, each of which is associated with the venturi openings. Each of these tubes leads to a respective delivery head mounted to the shroud. The supplement is discharged from ports in the delivery head at a location near the rotating tines so that the supplement is applied in the area of the compost where the tines are performing the digging act.
It would be desirable if a digger as disclosed in my patent could be provided with some structure to assure proper delivery of the material being applied to the mushroom bed.
It would also be desirable if some structure could be provided to eliminate problems with digger shaft failure.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
An object of this invention is to provide a digger of the above type which meets the above needs.
A further object of this invention is to provide such a digger which would effectively apply material such as supplement or spawn to the compost of a mushroom bed.
In accordance with this invention a digger of the above type includes a power driven metering shaft at the bottom of the material holding compartment. The metering shaft has a plurality of sets of supply pockets for collecting the material from the compartment during rotation of the metering shaft and then depositing the material so that it could be conveyed by outlet hoses to a respective number of distributor heads located near the tines of the digging shaft. Preferably, each set of supply pockets includes a plurality of supply pockets which are equally spaced around the circumference of the shaft. Preferably, each set of supply pockets deposits the material into a corresponding number of receiving pockets in a manifold. An air inlet hose is connected on the upstream side of the manifold to direct flow into the receiving pockets and discharge the material/air into a larger outlet hose which in turn leads to the distributor heads.
In a preferred practice of this invention a supply pocket from each set of circumferentially aligned pockets is connected to a supply pocket from an adjacent set by a breaker bridge which is preferably in the form of an inverted shallow V-shaped groove to assure that the material from the compartment will be discharged into the supply pockets rather than caking or clogging in the compartment. Thus, in effect, the metering shaft includes a continuous groove across the bottom of the compartment with spaced portions of the groove being of greater depth to comprise the supply pockets so that there are no dead areas at the bottom of the compartment.
In accordance with a further practice of this invention the digger shaft is a hollow shaft which receives a reduced diameter stub portion of a drive shaft. The reduced diameter portion or stub portion is connected to an enlarged drive portion of the drive shaft which in turn is connected to the digging shaft. By having the drive portion of enlarged diameter there is less possibility of failure in the operation of the digging shaft. In a preferred practice of this aspect of the invention an internally threaded nut is permanently attached to the outside of the digging shaft and is threadably engaged with an externally threaded surface of the drive portion of the drive shaft to effectively secure the drive shaft and digging shaft together.
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Batson Victor
Connolly Bove & Lodge & Hutz LLP
Remo's Mushroom Services, Inc.
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