High efficiency elevator buckets
Modern vs. traditional design
An elevator bucket is an elevator bucket, right? Not anymore. Recent advances in design technology have brought the advent of the modern high efficiency centrifugal discharge elevator bucket. High efficiency elevator buckets push the traditional limits of carrying capacity, input flow and discharge, construction materials and diminished shipping space.
A high efficiency elevator bucket has ALL of the following characteristics:
• Smooth interior front faces, with no breaks, that provide an efficient discharge over higher speeds
• They can be mounted closely together to deliver the greatest, and thereby, most efficient throughput
• A tapered bottom that allows the buckets to fill and discharge efficiently
• The tapered bottom allows the buckets to nest inside one another, for more efficient shipping and storage
• Wing-less sidewalls, making the design more cost efficient and thereby reducing material costs
The “breaks” or “angles” seen in the interior front face of some traditional grain handling elevator buckets serve no determinable function. They neither improve material flow nor discharge efficiency. They simply mimic the design employed by the original fabricated steel buckets of the 1920s, where a break press was used on sheet steel to gradually bend the metal into a curve. High efficiency elevator buckets have a smooth interior front face with employing compound curve geometry. This delivers an efficient discharge with no impediments and no crevices where product can collect. Clean out is efficient and cross contamination is minimized.
High efficiency elevator buckets feature a tapered bottom. This tapered bottom is key to the performance of the high efficiency design and is leveraged for several advantages. It allows the buckets to be mounted closely together with a minimum of vertical spacing. This creates a “column” of input material and generates the greatest amount throughput possible in the elevator leg system.
Close vertical spacing requires the efficient entry and exit of input materials into the elevator bucket string. The tapered bottom allows the buckets to fill and discharge not just from the front, but from the sides as well. This style of bucket feeds more efficiently on the up-leg, but also in the boot section as well.
The tapered bottom allows high efficiency elevator buckets to nest inside one another. This makes shipping and storage more efficient. Traditional buckets do not nest and even when
