MONONEN, Sakari (Keskuskatu 31, Kontiolahti, FI-81100, FI)
CLAIMS
1. An apparatus for cleaning especially wooden material, such as stumps and felling waste, which apparatus comprises a grapple frame (1) fixed to a grapple rotator (9) which is connected to a crane arm (8), means to turn and fill the grapple by pulling, grapple arms (3 a and 4) on opposite sides of the grapple frame, pivotally connected to frame and provided with a plurality of teeth, as well as a power unit (6) to turn the grapple arms, characterized in that at least some of the second grapple arms (3 a) are truncated at their top and have arms (3 b) connected thereto by joints (5), and in that the apparatus comprises a power unit (7) to drive the arms (3b) for the purpose of impact cleaning the material.
2. An apparatus as defined in claim 1, characterized in that the second grapple arms (3a) are truncated at their top. |
APPARATUS FOR CLEANING ESPECIALLY WOODEN MATERIAL
The invention relates to an apparatus for cleaning especially wooden material, such as stumps and felling waste, for example, from soil substances, which apparatus is defined in the preamble of Claim 1. At present as much wood material as possible is collected up, and even stumps as well as other wood material are picked up from the ground and utilized. The problem related with this are the soil substances contained in the wood material. The wood material, such as stumps, is purified from the soil substances by means of an appropriate apparatus, such as a stump rake in which the up-and-down motion of the teeth vibrates the stump pieces on the teeth.
Besides, an eccentric vibrator moving on rubber springs can be used to clean the material in the grapple of the working machine.
However, a drawback related with working with the current apparatuses is the slowness of work caused by the back-and- forth lifting and vibrating of the wood material, such as a stump piece, on the rake by the grapple cylinder. A cleaning apparatus provided with an eccentric vibrator is heavy, and the vibrating of the entire grapple exerts stress on the crane boom.
A drawback related the above apparatuses is that the mass of the whole rake and grapple has to be used to vibrate the material to be processed. This, in turn, in- creases the stresses in the boom and elsewhere in the structure.
The object of the invention is to provide an apparatus by means of which a conclusive improvement in the above-mentioned drawbacks is attained.
To achieve the object of the invention, the apparatus according to invention is characterized by what is defined in the characterizing part of claim 1. The substantial increase in the efficiency of the purification of the material in the grapple and the increased working speed can be regarded as the most important advantage of the invention. This is especially true when the mechanism is connected, for example, to an apparatus according to patent FI 102674, it thus becoming possible to faster parallelize a larger amount of material to be purified into the grapple by a pulling motion. The arms striking the material in the grapple of the working machine against the bottom plate of the grapple increase the purification efficiency, whereby the strikes have a more effective impact and a high strike ve-
locity can be used. Besides, the bottom plates in the apparatus prevent the material from being thrown out of the grapple during the strikes.
No high stress is exerted on the whole grapple and the structure of the boom of the working machine because, in the apparatus according to invention, instead of using the whole grapple to achieve the strike function, they are only the arms on one side of the grapple that generate the cleaning striking motion for the material to be purified in the grapple.
The structure is simple and inexpensive to manufacture. The weight of the apparatus is augmented only a little but the increase in the working speed is considerable. The apparatus according to this invention makes it possible to efficiently clean stump pieces, which have been cut into smaller pieces and picked up from the ground, as well as to shake off the needles especially in the case of felling waste. It is preferable that the needles stay on the ground as a nutrient and because they are disadvantageous to the combustion of felling waste in power plants. It is important to clean the material to be burned from the soil substances because they cause expenses by wearing the crushing equipment to excess. As the cleaning grapple is connectable to the crane of the vehicle, this apparatus makes it possible to carry out the purification in several different steps, if needed, when loading from the ground and unloading. The simultaneous purification and loading saves a sig- nificant amount of time.
The loading properties being even better than normal due to the mostly parallel orientation of the material in the grapple and to the resulting compactness of the load also constitutes a significant advantage.
Furthermore, it should be noted that the working speed of conventional loading arms cannot be augmented to the level of impact purification and they cannot be used to perform impact purification, for the following reasons. Because power is needed to compress with the grapple, the power unit must have a large volume, in which case there is not enough oil flow to enable fast movements. Besides, the direction of the motion paths is more disadvantageous to the purification. In the following, the invention is described with reference to the accompanying drawing.
Figure 1 is a side view of an apparatus according to the invention and the purification function.
Figure 2 is a side view of an apparatus according to invention in an opened state.
Figure 3 is a side view of a grapple according to the invention provided with a conventional suspension.
As shown in Figures 1, 2 and 3, a grapple rotator having a grapple frame 1 fixed thereto is connected to a crane arm 8. Arms 3 a and arms 4, which both are provided with a plurality of teeth, are connected to the grapple frame 1 through joints 2 on one side and on the other side of the frame, respectively. The arms 3a and 4 move like a conventional grapple. An arm 3b is pivoted to the arm 3a by a joint 5, being used relative to the arm 3a by a power unit 7, which in this case is a hydraulic cylinder. In other words, the arms 3a, 3b on one side of the grapple are pivoted to each other. Thus, the lower arms 3 b can hit the material in the grapple in order to clean it. In the grapple shown in Figures 1 and 2, an apparatus according to the invention is combined with an apparatus according to patent Fl 102674. The apparatus has an auxiliary arm connected to the crane arm 8 via a joint, it being rotatable against a counter plate below the grapple rotator 9, as shown in Figure 2. This grapple is filled by pulling, which parallelizes the material moving into the grapple. The embodiment according to Figure 3 is a grapple attached to a crane arm by a conventional suspension, having material taken into it by a conventional inward- turning motion of the arms.
When using a grapple according to invention, wood material, such as stumps and felling waste, is picked up from the ground or from another place into the grapple as well as pressed against the bottom plate of the frame by means of the arms of the grapple. The wood material is purified by moving the arms 3b on one side of the grapple, first outwards and then strongly inwards by means of the power unit 7, whereby these arms 3b hit the material to be purified in the grapple, and the loose material to be removed, such as rock material, can fall out. The grapple operates and is used in the same way as a conventional grapple when no inclination is used and the arm 3b is turned into the outermost basic position as viewed from the center line.
In an embodiment of the invention, some of the second grapple arms are truncated but one or more of them are not, it thus being possible for it or them to hold the material to be purified. In another embodiment of the invention all the second grapple arms are truncated, the material to be purified being held by the grapple arms located on the opposite side.
The invention is not restricted to the above-described exemplary embodiments but it can be modified within the scope of the accompanying claims.