Stone working – Brick cleaning
Patent
1989-08-31
1991-05-28
Rachuba, Maukina
Stone working
Brick cleaning
51206R, B28D 120
Patent
active
050185047
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to cleaning mortar from used bricks and the like.
2. Discussion of Background
Used bricks and the like from demolished buildings can be reused if the mortar is removed from them. Used bricks are esthetically desirable in newly-built homes designed in a traditional style or in reconstruction of older homes. Buyers of used, cleaned bricks pay up to five times the price of new bricks. Alternatively, the cost of disposing of used bricks can be substantial, thus further encouraging cleaning and reuse.
Brick cleaning is generally done by hand and is hard work. An experienced brick cleaner can clean about one brick per minute but with significant breakage. Furthermore, hand cleaned bricks are not uniform and are harder to work with in construction. There are machines for cleaning bricks, such as those described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,557,246 to Seeley and U.S. Pat. No. Re. 26,868 of La Belle, et al. The Seeley machine has a conveyor belt with spaced dogs for moving individual bricks between spaced, toothed sprockets. The LaVelle et al. machine has toothed rolls that turn in one direction and abrasive rolls that turn in an opposing direction to clean bricks that move along on a conveyor belt.
These machines have a great many moving parts which can become jammed with bricks and crumbled mortar pieces. Both rely on an operator to feed individual bricks onto a conveyer. These machines do not easily accommodate bricks of varying sizes or hand made bricks. These problems and others, and the need for efficient brick cleaning machines, require or consider desirable a used brick cleaning machine that is simple and rugged, accommodates bricks of varying sizes, even at the same time, that thoroughly cleans the mortar from the bricks and can receive a stack of bricks at a one time.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
In accordance with its major aspects, the brick cleaning machine of the present invention comprises a channel on a frame, a hopper at one end of the channel for loading a stack of bricks, a means for moving one brick at a time from the hopper into a feeding position at that end of the channel, a hydraulic ram for advancing the next brick from the feeding position through a mortar crumbling section comprising gangs of interleaved spur gear assemblies. "Interleaved" means the spur gears of a spool are spaced apart so that the spur gears of one spool can be inserted or introduced at regular intervals between the spur gears of an adjacent spool, as shown in FIG. 4. As a brick is advanced by the ram along the channel, it advances a preceding brick and any other bricks in the series through the mortar crumbling section. The spur gear assemblies adjacent the channel crumble the mortar on three sides of the brick, then the series of bricks advance among scrapers which scrape the crumbled mortar from the bricks before each brick exits the opposite end of the channel. Each gang of spur gear assemblies is separately spring biased against the bricks in the channel so that different sizes of bricks can be accommodated.
It is a feature of the present invention that the spur gears are interleaved so that multidirectional forces are applied to break the mortar with the advantage of better crumbling of the mortar than would be achieved by simple penetration of mortar by spurs or teeth.
It is another feature of the present invention that a stack of bricks can be loaded into the hopper and each brick is moved automatically into feeding position, with the advantages that the operator's hands are kept away from the ram and the machine can be more productive because the operator has time to select bricks for cleaning as the machine feeds the bricks from the hopper.
Another feature of the present invention is that there is no conveyor belt; the bricks slide along the flat channel, pushed by an hydraulic ram and subsequent bricks, with the advantage that there is no conveyor to be fouled, and force is directly applied, the axis of the ram aligned with the axis of
REFERENCES:
patent: 1239480 (1917-09-01), Hardin
patent: 3087483 (1963-04-01), Layelle et al.
patent: 4557246 (1985-12-01), Seeley
Sifly Raymond W.
Terbrugge Gary
Terbrugge Neville C.
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