Pto-Driven Rotary Seed Cleaner

Pto-Driven Rotary Seed Cleaner CROPS Miscellaneous 18-4-7 A new-style pto-driven seed cleaner lets Dale Pocock, Nipawin, Sask., clean small grains and "buff' or polish the seed at the same time. The home-built cleaner consists of an 8-ft. long, 10-in. dia. pto-driven auger with a 4-ft. section of screen along the bottom. Grain enters the auger/cleaner through a hopper at one end. The first 1 1/ 2 ft. of auger is equipped with conventional flighting. Pocock removed the flighting from the rest of the auger, re-placing it with round 1-in. dia., 3-in. long "beater bars" welded at 90 degree angles to the center shaft and spaced about 2 in. apart. A series of stationary concave teeth extend part way into each side of the auger. The beaters compress seed against the concaves and force dirt and small fines down through the screen. Grain exits from the auger through an adjust-able spring-loaded door at the end of the auger and slides down a chute into a hopper where it's removed by another auger. Fines that are too big to go through the auger screen are sucked up by a vacuum fan positioned at the top of the chute and delivered through a flexible hose into a barrel. "It does a better job than commercial electric-powered cleaners that need 3-phase power and cost thousands of dollars," says Pocock, who works in the seed cleaning business and primarily came up with the idea toremove"awns",orbeards, from barley and wheat. "We spent only about $400 to build it. It can handle about 200 bu. of barley per hour. The combination of the screen and fan remove almost all of the awns and fines. The vacuum fan is powered by an electric motor. It also works great for removing fine hairs from grass seeds. It can even be used with crested wheatgrass to break apart seeds that stick together. I use different sizes of screens depending on the type of seed I'm cleaning. "The vacuum fan has a nozzle with a flat sliding door on the bottom that ex-tends across the width of the down chute. The sliding door can be opened or closed to control the amount of vacuum. "The spring-loaded exit door on the outlet end of the auger controls the amount of backpressure inside the auger which controls the amount of conditioning cleaning. Tension on the spring is controlled by adjusting a threaded I-bolt. The tighter the spring, the longer grain stays inside the auger and the more the beating action." Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Dale Pocock, Box 749, Nipawin, Sask., Canada SOE 1E0 (ph 306 862-9184).

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