Screw Conveyors
Screw conveyors (also referred to as auger conveyors) are mechanisms that use flighting (a rotating helical blade) to move granular or liquid material. In most of the cases, screw conveyors are used with a slight decline or horizontally to move semi-solid materials such as cereal grain, wood chips, food waste, animal feeds, and municipal solid waste. They are some of the most preferred methods of handling bulk materials in many industries. Screw conveyors are in most of the cases designed with a tube or trough with a spiral blade that is coiled on the shaft. The shaft is driven by a motor on one end and free on the other end to empty the material being moved. The quantity of material that you can move using screw conveyors depends on the shaft rotational rate. Screw conveyors are considered a cost-effective method of moving materials, especially when handling semisolid materials to evacuate from a machine for storage or feeding to another processing unit. Some of the common industries that rely on screw conveyors include agriculture like in the case of combine harvesters. They are also used on snowblowers, food processing, and oil fields.