When a company needs to move liquid or granular materials, they will generally stick with a screw conveyor from cornerstoneautosys.com. These particular conveyor systems utilize rotating helical screw blades, a process known as “flighting.” This system is usually contained within a tube, and are most commonly used in various bulk handling industries. Slight inclines or horizontal placements are used with modern screw conveyors to maximize the efficiency of semi-solid material movement, including meat and bone meal, food waste, wood chips, cereal grains, animal feed, ash, solid waste, and various other aggregates. Screw conveyors have been in use since ancient times – the first known system being the archimedian screw; The archimedian screw was used to pump irrigation water. A spiral blade that’s coiled around a shaft is used in a trough or tube, and is operated at one end while being held at the other – the result is a type of “shaftless spiral.” The rate of transfer is directly related to the rate of operation or rotation of the shaft.

These types of conveyor systems are used in industrial control applications as variable control devices, moderating the rotation rate of the shaft, allowing a precise amount of material into the process. Operation is also possible when the flow of material is inclined upward, so long as space allows – this happens to be a very economical means of elevating and conveying. The permissible capacity of a specified unit will rapidly decrease as the angle of inclination increases. Screw conveyors can also be found in use in general agricultural applications. Snowblowers utilize this method to move snow towards an impeller, which then throws the snow into a discharge chute. A combine harvester will use open and enclosed augers to transport unthreshed crops into the appropriate mechanism whilst moving the grain around the machine’s hopper.