Vertical-screw-auger conveyer feeder

摘要

A conical feeder is attached to a vertically conveying screw auger. The feeder is equipped with scoops and rotated from the surface to force-feed regolith the auger. Additional scoops are possible by adding a cylindrical section above the conical funnel section. Such then allows the unit to collect material from swaths larger in diameter than the enclosing casing pipe of the screw auger. A third element includes a flexible screw auger. All three can be used in combination in microgravity and zero atmosphere environments to drill and recover a wide area of subsurface regolith and entrained volatiles through a single access point on the surface.

主权项

1. A granular solid material cone feeder for a centrifuging screw-auger conveyer, comprising:
a funnel-shaped cutter-head nose shell of high hardness alloy with a conical skirt and a central attachment point for a rotating driveshaft; a first set of equally distributed louvers externally disposed in the conical skirt and that open on the outside with axial-arranged digging scoops; a first set of adjacent louvers on the inside of the nose shell with corresponding tilted or internally curved material-acceleration and deflection blades for each; a corresponding first set of oversize-material rejecting slots disposed between the digging scoops and the material acceleration/deflection blades; and a circular aft brim or cylindrical extension to mate with a centrifuging screw-auger conveyer and contain loose material within.