Carpet cleaning machine with maintenance-reducing features

摘要

Disclosed is a carpet cleaning machine having a revolving, cylinder-shaped, double-ended carpet cleaning member powered by a gear-driven drive shaft for removing dirty material from a carpet. In the improvement, the drive shaft is coupled to the first end and an idler shaft is coupled to the second end, is spaced from the drive shaft and supports the second end for rotation. Double-ended support of the cleaning member materially reduces problems arising from cantilever shafts used in prior art machines to drive cleaning members. Another embodiment has a centrifugal separator with an air stream exit mouth and two flow guides fixed with respect to such mouth. The flow guides have differing aperture areas and a cavity is between the guides for capturing material otherwise permitted to flow downstream and prematurely clog a mesh filter. Preferably, the new machine also has a vacuum nozzle with a flared mouth which substantially prevents nozzle clogging when the machine vacuums dirty material comprising dirt-entraining particulate material.