Feed bin with integrated stripping

This direction looked promising, so I built a mock up to show what the final design might look like. The blue mesh on the rollers represents ex-met. One idea was to have a single roller with ex-met and rubber combined to give extra grip to the stripping end (bottom image).

V3 prototypes

Many thanks to Doug and Chris for stopping by and helping knock out some stripping/threshing prototypes!

Earlier in the week we had a idea session with a larger team, and today we mocked up some of the concepts to see how they worked:

Concept 1: "aperture" - A series of wires wound to create a sharp stripping edge while allowing for various sized panicles to be inserted. Image shows prototype and results.


Concept 2: "tube" - Beveled hole on curved surface to guide stripped material into thersher.

Concept 3: "pie tin" - Single hole in chamber to hold stripped material and then be dumped into thresher.

Breakthrough! - After mocking these up, we were wrestling with how to integrate the stripper into the existing roller assembly without having to force the user to insert or remove new pieces or re-position the system. It occured to us that we could utilize a smaller section of the rollers to integrate the stripping feature into the feed bin. This would allow the panicle to be stripped and the material to fall directly in to the rollers. Feeding the system one panicle at a time also "self metered" the amount of material fed into the rollers. We also added a guide at the bottom to separate the used panicle from the material.


This is a video of the 1st test:

Resulting millet, hand winnowed with cardboard: