A HAMMER ROTOR AND A FRAGMENTING APPARATUS FOR FRAGMENTING A WHOLE STONE SLAB

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The present invention is enclosed in the area of devices for fragmenting stone and hammer rotors for such devices, which are used for fragmenting stone.

PRIOR ART

Fragmenting stone refers to the shredding of a stone material into smaller pieces by the repeated impacts of hammers of reduced dimension.

The solutions known in the art are defined by a vertical arrangement suitable for crushing/milling, in which an inlet is provided above, a hammer rotor is provided centrally, and an outlet is provided below. In the inlet, a grid is provided such that only stone pieces fall onto the hammer rotor. The hammer rotor has fixed hammers which then crush the stone pieces against a second grid, thereby further crushing/milling the stone pieces. This is the case of the solutions described in patent applications EP0458059 and EP2457662.

These solutions are, as referred, suitable for stone pieces - in fact already fragmented -, not enabling to provide a whole stone slab on the inlet and fragment it wholly. Furthermore, even if a rather small stone slab (such as 400-500 mm) were to be provided on the vertically arranged inlet, such would still require a significantly high- power demand in order to fragment it, as the hammers - which are fixedly coupled to the rotating shaft of the rotor - would be grinding against the stone slab, and thereby requiring a high consumption in order to be able to grind through the whole stone slab. As a consequence, the prior art solutions also involve high noise.

The present solution innovatively overcomes such issues by providing, simultaneously, the fragmenting a whole stone slab with more than 2.000 mm at a lower power consumption and reduced noise.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

It is therefore an object of the present invention a hammer rotor for a fragmenting apparatus which comprises a rotatable inner shaft and at least two outer axles, wherein the outer axles are i) connected and parallel to the inner shaft thereby being jointly rotatable with the inner shaft and are ii) provided at a respective radius from the inner shaft, wherein the hammer rotor further comprises a plurality of hammers which are coupled to an outer axle, the hammers further being freely rotatable around a respective outer axle. The inner shaft of the hammer rotor of the present invention is able to rotate, thereby defining an inner axle of the hammer rotor. Two or more outer axles are fixedly or jointly connected to the inner shaft, thereby being jointly rotatable with the inner shaft. Such outer axles define axles of rotation for a plurality of hammers, which simultaneously rotate with the outer axles / inner shaft ensemble but are also freely rotatable around a respective outer axle. The outer axles are provided at a respective radius from the axle, meaning that all outer axles are at a predefined distance from the inner shaft, such distance typically being the same for all outer axles. Furthermore, by being freely rotatable - being able to rotate 360° around the outer axles -, the hammers may be provided in a section of a hammer rotor against which a stone slab is provided. This means that if a stone slab is provided horizontally against the hammer rotor of the present invention the freely rotatable hammers continuously wear it, fragmenting it into pieces. Oppositely to the solutions known in the art, the hammers of the rotor of the present invention are freely rotatable, and thus allow to fragment a whole stone slab with a much lower power consumption. In a regular application, a hammer rotor according to the present invention may lead to a fragmenting apparatus with a 7.5 kW / 10 hp power. A solution as those known in the art would require much more horsepower to provide the same result, not to mention the wear of the machine which results from grinding fixed hammers against a whole stone slab.

It is also an object of the present invention the use of the hammer rotor of the present invention, in any of its embodiments, for crushing a whole stone slab.

It is also part of the present invention a fragmenting apparatus for fragmenting a whole stone slab which comprises the hammer rotor of the present invention, in any of its embodiments, as well as a housing, an inlet and an outlet, the hammer rotor being so provided in the housing that i) a stone slab provided through the inlet is crushed by a rotation movement of the hammers of the hammer rotor and ii) crushed bits resulting from the crushing of the stone slab leave the housing through the outlet. The fragmenting apparatus implements the innovative configuration of the hammer rotor. Moreover, in an inventive aspect, the inlet is provided substantially perpendicularly to the outlet, the inlet being preferably arranged horizontally and the outlet being preferably arranged vertically.

It is yet an object of the present invention a method for crushing a whole stone slab with the fragmenting apparatus of the present invention, in any of its embodiments, the methods comprising the steps of providing a stone slab at the inlet the fragmenting apparatus, crushing such stone slab continuously through the rotation of the hammer rotor against the stone slab and obtaining crushed bits of the stone slab at the outlet of the fragmenting apparatus. The method implements the innovative configuration of the hammer rotor and fragmenting apparatus of the present invention. DESCRIPTION OF FIGURES

Figure 1 - representation of an embodiment of the hammer rotor (10) of the present invention. The hammer rotor has an inner shaft (11) to which four outer axles (12) are connected by means of a plurality of locking plates (14) which also restrain each hammer (13) from moving along the respective outer axle (12). A plurality of hammers (13) is provided along the four outer axles (12), each two hammers (13) provided next to each other being spaced apart. In particular, a spacer (15) is provided between each two locking plates (14), and thus also between each two hammers (13). In addition, by having four outer axles (12), the rotor (10) has two hammers (13) per group of hammers. Such reflects to a rotation of 90° between each two adjacent groups of hammers. The rotor (10) further comprises two wheels: a first wheel (16) for the connection to means for powering the rotation of the hammer rotor (10) and a second wheel (17) for coupling and aligning the hammer rotor with a fragmenting apparatus.

Figure 2 - representation of an embodiment of the fragmenting apparatus (20) of the present invention, in cross-section view. The fragmenting apparatus (20) comprises a hammer rotor (10) provided in its housing, between an inlet (21) on the right and an outlet (22) provided below. The inlet (21) is arranged in parallel with the hammer rotor (10). When a stone slab provided through the inlet (21) is crushed by a rotation movement of the hammers (13-1, 13-2) of the hammer rotor (10), crushed bits resulting from the crushing of the stone slab fall through the ramp channel (25) and leave the housing of the through the outlet (22). The hammer rotor (10) corresponds to that of Figure 1, thereby having four axles. In Figure 2, two adjacent groups of hammers are shown: a first group (13-1) and a second group (13-2). As in the embodiment of Figure 1, each two adjacent groups of hammers (13-1, 13-2) are rotated of 90° in relation to each other. The fragmenting apparatus (20) further comprises means for powering the rotation (24) of the hammer rotor (10), which are connected and power the rotation of the hammer rotor (10), rotating the inner shaft (11). In particular, the means for powering the rotation (24) may be connected to a first wheel (16) as that presented in Figure 1. The fragmenting apparatus (20) further comprises a base (26) which is provided with means for anchoring (27) the fragmenting apparatus (20) to the ground.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

The more general configurations of the present invention are described in the Summary of the invention. Such configurations are detailed below in accordance with other advantageous and/or preferred embodiments of implementation of the present invention.

Several embodiments of the hammer rotor of the present invention are described subsequently.

In an embodiment, a plurality of hammers is connected along a same outer axle. In an inventive aspect, each two hammers provided next to each other in a same outer axle are spaced apart of a predefined distance. Such allows that freely rotating hammers are easily provided.

In an embodiment, for each 2n or 2n+l outer axles, in which n is an integer equal or higher than 1, the hammer rotor comprises n hammers provided both in a) a same position with regard to the length of the inner shaft and b) different outer axles forming a group of hammers. The hammers are provided along outer axles, which in turn are connected to and are parallel to the inner shaft. Thus, considering the length of the rotor, the hammers are arranged along such length, as along an imaginary cartesian axis. If provided in different outer axles, two hammers may be provided in the same position with respect to the referred length of the inner shaft, thus enabling that a rotating hammer has as many hammer hits in a stone slab as the number of hammers provided in a same position with respect to the length of the inner shaft, improving the efficiency of the rotor. Such number of hammers provided in a same position are related to the number of outer axles. For a case of four axles, n equals two, meaning two hammers in a same position with respect to the length of the inner shaft. Thus, for each rotation of the inner shaft and, respectively, the outer axles and hammers, a stone slab is hit by two hammers. Furthermore, for each one or more hammers provided in a same position with respect to the length of the inner shaft, a group of hammers is defined. For the case of four axles, each group of hammers contains two hammers.

In an inventive aspect, in order to improve the balance of the hammer rotor of the present invention, for each 2n outer axles, each group of n hammers is coupled to respective outer axles such that is rotated of an angle of 360°/2n with respect to each adjacent group of hammers connected to other outer axles, wherein adjacent groups of hammers are thereby recurrently interchanged. Such allows that, at the same time, the hammers of a same group are evenly distributed through the outer axles, enhancing the balancing of the hammer rotor, and also that the groups of hammers are thereby recurrently interchanged in a simple manner. Through this configuration, and for a rotor with four outer axles, each two adjacent groups of hammers provide four hits at four different times at each rotation (two per group of hammers, the hammers being interchanged in different positions by the referred angle of rotation), thereby improving even further the efficiency of the hammer rotor. For n equalling two hammers, the rotation between each two groups of hammers is of 360°/2x2 equalling a rotation of 90°.

In an embodiment, the hammer rotor further comprises a plurality of locking plates, each group of hammers being flanked by two locking plates which are connected to the outer axles and restrain each hammer from moving along the respective outer axle. Furthermore, the locking plates may provide the connection between the outer axles and the inner shaft.

In a further embodiment, the hammer rotor further comprises a plurality of spacers, each spacer being connected to an outer axle and provided between two locking plates, thereby providing that two hammers provided next to each other in a same outer axle are spaced apart of a predefined distance.

Preferably, the hammer rotor comprises more than two outer axles, preferably 4, 6 or 8 outer axles.

In an embodiment, the hammers are made of a same material, the material of the hammers being denser than the material of the inner shaft and the outer axles. Preferably, the hammers comprise a metal, preferably a heavy metal, more preferably comprising steel or manganese.

In an embodiment, each hammer has a plane edge provided oppositely to the coupling to the respective outer axle.

In another embodiment, a full width of the hammers defined by the sum of all the groups of hammers along the inner shaft is of 1.500 to 3.000 mm, preferably of 1.750 to 2.350 mm, more preferably of 2.200 mm.

Several embodiments of the fragmenting apparatus of the present invention are described subsequently.

In an embodiment, the shaft of the hammer rotor is arranged in parallel with the inlet of the fragmenting apparatus.

In another embodiment, comprises a channel connected to the outlet, the channel being provided below the hammer rotor. Advantageously, the channel forms a ramp between a section below the hammer rotor and the outlet. ln an embodiment, the inlet has a width of 1.500 to 3.000 mm, preferably of 1.750 to 2.350 mm, more preferably of 2.200 mm and/or a height of 30-140 mm, more preferably 40-120 mm, even more preferably of 35-65 mm or 75-125 mm. In a further embodiment, the fragmenting apparatus further comprises means for powering the rotation of the hammer rotor, such means being coupled to the inner shaft of the hammer rotor. Advantageously, the means are automated and have a power 7 to 25 kW, more preferably 7-15 kW, even more preferably 7 or 15 kW. The fragmenting apparatus of the present invention is thereby able to run a power which is considerably lower than those of the solutions known in the art.

As will be clear to one skilled in the art, the present invention should not be limited to the embodiments described herein, and a number of changes are possible which remain within the scope of the present invention.

Of course, the preferred embodiments shown above are combinable, in the different possible forms, being herein avoided the repetition all such combinations.