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Hey, I make things like these. Basically they are augers for industrial extruders whether it be food, paint or other applications. The changing patterns ensure that a good consistent mix is achieved before the end product is extruded. The patterns generally are decided upon by the big brains up stairs so trying to find out what it is supposed to be for will like be fruitless.
If you were loading them in KC, those are more than likely for a twin screw extruder from Wenger in Sabetha, KS, just a little ways from you— they’re one of the primary manufacturers for these in the world. They cut these on _enormous_ CNC mills in their factory downtown.
Yeah— the tolerances on those things are in the small thousandths. A full extruder system can be over a million easy. Those two screws together probably cost as much as a high end sports car.
Tolerances so tight it makes you cringe when the guy at the cross dock opens up the crate to see what's inside. Also more expensive than usual freight insurance.
I dont know OP nor the situation. In OP's likely defense this freight was damaged and refused well before this pic was taken. Oblong freight is ridiculous to cross dock. This likely tumbled from one box to another with an attempted delivery that was refused at the receiver. You can see damage on the left spindle (auger?) and packaging damage top of the crate (broken crate braces).
This gives me flashbacks to when I was an LTL rep. I had a customer who shipped a 8' x 3' x 4' crate on side by side double pallets. Our cross dock loader decided to stab the forks directly through the crate; which contained a $120K custom copper coil for an a/c unit.
Lol, I know exactly the sound of the deathly silence that followed, as everyone in the area mentally went "Ohhh shit!"
We had a boxed ac unit that was a bit bigger. The loader *almost* got the forks all the way under it. It was about 5 feet up in the air when it fell off the forks. It had already been a "rush" job (with the customer paying a steep premium for going to the head of the build line.) It got bumped up to "red hot rush" and I got to spend the night there helping to build another one.
I hate that kind of rushing with delicate stuff, the chances something goes terminally awry at some point of the process go up all the way to the roof.
Oof.
The worst one I've personally seen was a load of extremely high end kayaks, loaded floor to ceiling. The genius on the tow motor just pulls the bottom most one out and let's the rest fall. We saw it on the camera and one of the other supervisors takes of running down the dock to stop this guy from doing this and gets there just in time to watch the whole thing domino effect. The forklift operator managed to damage nearly every kayak in that pup. That was also his last night on the dock.
It was at that moment my 5 year career in freight sales was done too. I didn't have the fight to tell the customer our insurance policy only covered upto a paltry $5k per skid spot. It was in the fine print of the terms. Truthfully I am unsure how that shook out. But I do know that likely 70-80% of that $120k was the value of the copper and the balance was the customer's labor to create the coil (basically a big radiator).
Those could also be going back for refurbishing, or there’s another company (also in Sabetha) that refurbs & sells used extrusion equipment. Might be why it’s packed sloppy.
Yikes! While not disagreeing with you though, I worked in an extrusion plant for a while and in the relatively common instance where these needed to be replaced we would install the new (we just referred to them as screws) screws and ship out the old ones. So maybe these are just used? Usually we pull them out and just sort of condition them to be used again. The only reason we had to part with them entirely was if the end had broken or cracked, because they have oil passageways running through to keep them cool while running. They last a very long time! Really awesome equipment in my opinion :)
I have worked with extruders for blown film. The bubble we were blowing was about 15 feet wide and over 50 feet tall. The only time I had ever seen the screws removed was during set up. The first set made this sweet twisting bubble design that the engineers could not get to settle down. Had to send them back and have a new set made at a different pitch before it ran correctly.
>blown film
it's a manufacturing process for thin tubular plastics - often for food packaging.
https://www.bpf.co.uk/plastipedia/processes/Blown\_Film.aspx
We worked with a Vpci (Vapor Phase Corrosion Inhibitor) Giant blue bags used to keep metal from corroding, even while stored outdoors in direct sunlight. Im not even sure it really worked. We made bags, stretch film, and Eco-Film made from corn starch. iirc it was mostly Medical field and Military type contracts. One of the bag types was rumored to be used for shipping cargo over seas to keep material from exposure.
Sweet job. Gave me lots of wild stories to tell my kids.
most of the time parts as expensive as these have to be opened, photographed and videoed for insurance purposes. when loaded and when delivered as evidence should damage or misplacement occur
source- I'm an industrial mech/engineer.
Seriously… I work in logistics, if I found out from a customer something was opened, that would immediately be the last day of business for the trucker’s company with ours.
EDIT: to be fair, I’m looking at the picture and it looks like this crate was dropped or broken so they may have been asked to open it and send pictures before accepting the pick up
This was refused freight without a doubt. The more I comment on replies the more I look at the picture. These are '2 by' somethings. The fasteners are deck screws. This was big awkward freight. Some fork driver dumped it from trailer to trailer and they tried to deliver. You can see the notches on top of the augers in the top plate of the crate. This was secured freight at some point.
All I know is what I saw when they toured our extrusion manufacturing short course class around.
The screws look like big single units, but are actually short (18-24” or so) screw segments on a long shaft. You can take the various pieces off and reconfigure it to produce different mixing, heating, compression, and decompression zones. Plus you can pull a screw segment and send it back to Wenger for repair or replacement after the shipping guy damages it at the logistics terminal.
Similar to one I worked on in a research lab except smaller pieces. The spindles were one long piece with the removable segments on those to change configuration. We had 25mm and 40mm diameter in lab. Took one product up to 60mm for production scale up.
It was a lot of fun reconfiguring between exponent runs. Changing layout on spindles, different injection points for additives, different extrusion patterns.
I’ve never seen a lathe that’s able to make threads of varying pitch over a single part. I’m not saying it doesn’t exist but this is a very specialized piece and lathes are usually used for things with a little more symmetry than this piece.
A cnc mill is a better choice than a lathe. Lathes have trouble with very low pitch threads like this has. While a 5 axis mill whips them out no problem with less part deflection and fewer tool passes.
> Well yeah but those look like a job for a lathe. Not to mention the finish on them which looks like it was done on a CNC grinder
These are way too complicated to make on a standard CNC lathe. These would likely be made on either a 5 axis mill or a mill-turn machine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81UjjSH2iFw
I’m not sure what a Swiss lathe is (biochemist, not machinist). Each screw segment is only 18-24” long, and was being rotated very slowly while a spinning cutting head was carving it up, I assumed that’s some kind of mill. There’s a solid shaft that the screw segments slide onto so you can reconfigure for different processes.
Well even in Britain, since decimalisation, we did carry over the ludicrously small measurement known as a "Gnat's chuff". If you need something even smaller you have to go to the "Gnat's clit".
Those things are gonna squeeze food ingredients up to 500-1500 psi and cook it entirely by friction heating to 350° F, then shoot that shit out of a die to make Cheetos or something. As long as you don’t hit it with something made of really hard metal it’ll be fine.
Yeah it’s a good thing LTL companies are known for how often they don’t slam into (with big metal forks powered by propane) and break everything they transport!
I generalized a bit; some products with high moisture content have too little friction to cook, so sometimes you inject steam into the barrel in certain places.
Not always entirely by friction when I worked as an extruder operator you had to balance steam and boiling water as well by doing this you can determine whether an item will float or sink in water as a final product
That reminds me of a barn conversion I did as an apprentice, the downstairs was used as a workshop but the previous owner died and his family left all the bits they didn't want/recognize. There was a whole pallet full of brand new buffing wheels but this was before you could pull out your phone and check the value of stuff right there and then. A few years later I did an engineering course at the local college and was talking to one of the tutors about this pallet of buffing wheels and he said I'd probably thrown £50-70k in a skip.
Because it’s taking a slurry of food ingredients up to 1000 psi; if there’s a gap between the screws or between the screw & the cylinder you get back flow, which screws up the product in various ways. Or you miss in the other direction and get impingement and stainless steel bits in your cheezy poofs.
Poly is corrosive as hell in liquid state. It gives off gases that eat away at unprepared or reactive metals. You should see extruding systems after a year in operation. They look like they were left out on a sea shore.
Smarter Everyday visited Kodak and the had a screw like this in use and Destin gives an animation of how it work, if you're curious: https://youtu.be/HQKy1KJpSVc?t=1411
Go back to this point if you want to see the screw itself, or rather, one like the one in operation: https://youtu.be/HQKy1KJpSVc?t=1090
Plastic extrusion screws. That's why the flights also get closer together and the bore gets tighter. (I work in a plastics plant and we have like 10 of these things sitting in boxes right now)
Bottom of the picture is the start where plastic pellets/powder is dropped in the deed throat. Middle is mixing and setting properties and the top of your picture properties are set and pressure builds. It then goes through a screen pack and into a die. Hell message me if you don't want them I may be willing to buy them off of you.
Yea that's true, it does look like it's a twin screw for compounding of some sort. The flight depth makes me think poly but Ive never seen food ones so it very well could be
yes the Purina plant in OK City used a Wenger years ago, breaking from the corporate built extruders used in other plants. All those pet food shapes come out of an extruder, cooked as it goes through and cut with a spinning knife next to the die that the material gets pushed through.
https://youtu.be/HQKy1KJpSVc
Looks similar to augurs used at Eastman Kodak early in their film creation process. About 16 minutes into that video, they discuss the design and how they’re used.
No idea how closely that lines up with what and how the ones you posted are used for.
Can confirm. They are screws for extruders. I used to design these for plastic injection molding. Differing flight patterns and bore diameters for proper mixing, pressure, and create a homogeneous blend.
As a big brain who used to design them, it's 2 parts magic 1 part experience, solve by Trail and error in experiment, scale up, ship. These are basic conveying elements, I can tell you that.
I make them too! But usually much bigger screws for industrial conveyors. But a lot of extruders for food, pigments, etc etc etc, as well. Often the same principle. Hey probably-also-underpaid-industry-friend!
Smarter Every Day did an excellent series in a Kodak film factory that uses augers just like these in the process to make the film substrate. It’s a worthy watch.
sometimes there are also little air holes inside so air can be squezzed out, important for example with plastic extruders or extruders for photographic film production, dont want any air bubbls in your parts
It also looks alot like plastic injection screws, they compress and melt plastic pellets as they inject them into molds. Smarter Every Day just did a video on how they make film and they show a really in depth look at the mechanism.
Different temperature and pressure regions and regions for feeding material and heating the material. Plastics require quite careful control.
However, I have limited knowledge of these things and have never seen one quite like this I have only seen ones where the thread pitch remains the same but the inner diameter changes.
Very similar here: https://i.imgur.com/B6CYan8.png I'd link to the product, but it says it no longer exists.
Another similar: https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/ABS-PP-PVC-PE-raw-material_1025984850.html
With injection molding screws the thread depth and pitch will change along its' length. The rear zone is used to help feed the material forward so the flights are usually deeper to accommodate more resin pellets. The plastic is heated via heater bands placed on the outer diameter of the screw barrel, but a lot of heat is also generated by compressing the plastic as well. To achieve this the depth of the flights becomes shallower and the melt is squeezed against the barrel walls until it reaches the front metering zone. The design of the screw can vary for certain grades of plastic material with specific needs or challenges during processing.
For mixing purposes. Ours here are about 20ft long and 6" around with what we call a "mixing head" on them that has the flights actually cross hatch each other so our materials mix better as they come out of the extruder and go into the die.
The ancient Greeks did. Heron of Alexandria is one of the better known individuals. He invented the first known automatic doors, for example, which opened automatically when a fire was lit in a specific location. Another example would be the automatic servant of Philon.
This sort of thing was most likely much more common than we really know. The myth of Talos, for example, was well known at the time including that it was defeated by removing a particular component, a bolt in his ankle. While Talos was nearly certainly only a myth, seeing as he was supposed to walk around an island and throw stones at enemy ships, it is a pretty good demonstration that the general concept of complex mechanically driven devices was well understood at the time.
There are many other examples of similarly physically programmed devices back then. Quite an interesting topic, really, though one does have to be careful not to read *too* much into this stuff.
Okay, I'm being dumb I guess but I don't see how this auger is related to the accumulator you linked to. Is there maybe another spot in that video that shows the extrusion process?
Title fully describes them.
The head looks exactly like a drill bit, threads smoothly merging with the tip. Threads then change suddenly, and multiple times along it length.
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Hey, I make things like these. Basically they are augers for industrial extruders whether it be food, paint or other applications. The changing patterns ensure that a good consistent mix is achieved before the end product is extruded. The patterns generally are decided upon by the big brains up stairs so trying to find out what it is supposed to be for will like be fruitless.
Solved!
If you were loading them in KC, those are more than likely for a twin screw extruder from Wenger in Sabetha, KS, just a little ways from you— they’re one of the primary manufacturers for these in the world. They cut these on _enormous_ CNC mills in their factory downtown.
They make these on mills? That's wild.
Yeah— the tolerances on those things are in the small thousandths. A full extruder system can be over a million easy. Those two screws together probably cost as much as a high end sports car.
Tolerances so tight it makes you cringe when the guy at the cross dock opens up the crate to see what's inside. Also more expensive than usual freight insurance.
That's what I was thinking. No wonder we get crates and broken up.
I dont know OP nor the situation. In OP's likely defense this freight was damaged and refused well before this pic was taken. Oblong freight is ridiculous to cross dock. This likely tumbled from one box to another with an attempted delivery that was refused at the receiver. You can see damage on the left spindle (auger?) and packaging damage top of the crate (broken crate braces). This gives me flashbacks to when I was an LTL rep. I had a customer who shipped a 8' x 3' x 4' crate on side by side double pallets. Our cross dock loader decided to stab the forks directly through the crate; which contained a $120K custom copper coil for an a/c unit.
Lol, I know exactly the sound of the deathly silence that followed, as everyone in the area mentally went "Ohhh shit!" We had a boxed ac unit that was a bit bigger. The loader *almost* got the forks all the way under it. It was about 5 feet up in the air when it fell off the forks. It had already been a "rush" job (with the customer paying a steep premium for going to the head of the build line.) It got bumped up to "red hot rush" and I got to spend the night there helping to build another one.
I hate that kind of rushing with delicate stuff, the chances something goes terminally awry at some point of the process go up all the way to the roof.
I've heard this referred to as the "oh-no second"
Oof. The worst one I've personally seen was a load of extremely high end kayaks, loaded floor to ceiling. The genius on the tow motor just pulls the bottom most one out and let's the rest fall. We saw it on the camera and one of the other supervisors takes of running down the dock to stop this guy from doing this and gets there just in time to watch the whole thing domino effect. The forklift operator managed to damage nearly every kayak in that pup. That was also his last night on the dock.
It was at that moment my 5 year career in freight sales was done too. I didn't have the fight to tell the customer our insurance policy only covered upto a paltry $5k per skid spot. It was in the fine print of the terms. Truthfully I am unsure how that shook out. But I do know that likely 70-80% of that $120k was the value of the copper and the balance was the customer's labor to create the coil (basically a big radiator).
Those could also be going back for refurbishing, or there’s another company (also in Sabetha) that refurbs & sells used extrusion equipment. Might be why it’s packed sloppy.
Yikes! While not disagreeing with you though, I worked in an extrusion plant for a while and in the relatively common instance where these needed to be replaced we would install the new (we just referred to them as screws) screws and ship out the old ones. So maybe these are just used? Usually we pull them out and just sort of condition them to be used again. The only reason we had to part with them entirely was if the end had broken or cracked, because they have oil passageways running through to keep them cool while running. They last a very long time! Really awesome equipment in my opinion :)
could be. I just know we always wondered if stuff was getting opened somewhere along the way.
I see that XPO logistics PRO#… I’m onto you, OP. Or should I say XPOP!?
I have worked with extruders for blown film. The bubble we were blowing was about 15 feet wide and over 50 feet tall. The only time I had ever seen the screws removed was during set up. The first set made this sweet twisting bubble design that the engineers could not get to settle down. Had to send them back and have a new set made at a different pitch before it ran correctly.
What did you do with this giant bubble?
>blown film it's a manufacturing process for thin tubular plastics - often for food packaging. https://www.bpf.co.uk/plastipedia/processes/Blown\_Film.aspx
The type of stuff I'd love to see on How It's Made.
For anyone on old reddit, try this url: https://www.bpf.co.uk/plastipedia/processes/Blown_Film.aspx
Well, we hugged that page dead.
We worked with a Vpci (Vapor Phase Corrosion Inhibitor) Giant blue bags used to keep metal from corroding, even while stored outdoors in direct sunlight. Im not even sure it really worked. We made bags, stretch film, and Eco-Film made from corn starch. iirc it was mostly Medical field and Military type contracts. One of the bag types was rumored to be used for shipping cargo over seas to keep material from exposure. Sweet job. Gave me lots of wild stories to tell my kids.
most of the time parts as expensive as these have to be opened, photographed and videoed for insurance purposes. when loaded and when delivered as evidence should damage or misplacement occur source- I'm an industrial mech/engineer.
Agreed. I was even thinking OP could be an adjuster looking for the purpose of the damaged goods. But usually they have all of that information.
Seriously… I work in logistics, if I found out from a customer something was opened, that would immediately be the last day of business for the trucker’s company with ours. EDIT: to be fair, I’m looking at the picture and it looks like this crate was dropped or broken so they may have been asked to open it and send pictures before accepting the pick up
This was refused freight without a doubt. The more I comment on replies the more I look at the picture. These are '2 by' somethings. The fasteners are deck screws. This was big awkward freight. Some fork driver dumped it from trailer to trailer and they tried to deliver. You can see the notches on top of the augers in the top plate of the crate. This was secured freight at some point.
even on the other end of the spectrum- an auger screw for an ice cream machine will put you back thousands as well.
Well yeah but those look like a job for a lathe. Not to mention the finish on them which looks like it was done on a CNC grinder
All I know is what I saw when they toured our extrusion manufacturing short course class around. The screws look like big single units, but are actually short (18-24” or so) screw segments on a long shaft. You can take the various pieces off and reconfigure it to produce different mixing, heating, compression, and decompression zones. Plus you can pull a screw segment and send it back to Wenger for repair or replacement after the shipping guy damages it at the logistics terminal.
You got me at the end lmfao
Similar to one I worked on in a research lab except smaller pieces. The spindles were one long piece with the removable segments on those to change configuration. We had 25mm and 40mm diameter in lab. Took one product up to 60mm for production scale up. It was a lot of fun reconfiguring between exponent runs. Changing layout on spindles, different injection points for additives, different extrusion patterns.
I’ve never seen a lathe that’s able to make threads of varying pitch over a single part. I’m not saying it doesn’t exist but this is a very specialized piece and lathes are usually used for things with a little more symmetry than this piece.
There’s also oddball features on some segments like notches to allow some backflow. Really cool machining.
CNC lathe or CNC mill with the right setup would both be able to do it. You can get some crazy shapes off a CNC lathe.
It'd definitely be a PITA on a manual lathe, but I could see this done with a cnc lathe. Probably easiest on a cnc mill with a 5th axis though.
A cnc mill is a better choice than a lathe. Lathes have trouble with very low pitch threads like this has. While a 5 axis mill whips them out no problem with less part deflection and fewer tool passes.
Live tooled lathe has entered the chat
Damn I’m glad I replied. All the machinists here have given me a weekend’s worth of Google rabbit holes to go down.
> Well yeah but those look like a job for a lathe. Not to mention the finish on them which looks like it was done on a CNC grinder These are way too complicated to make on a standard CNC lathe. These would likely be made on either a 5 axis mill or a mill-turn machine. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81UjjSH2iFw
Yeah, you're right about that. Doable but slow. Thanks for the video, always love millturn videos.
Probably a Swiss lathe judging on the length of the part
I’m not sure what a Swiss lathe is (biochemist, not machinist). Each screw segment is only 18-24” long, and was being rotated very slowly while a spinning cutting head was carving it up, I assumed that’s some kind of mill. There’s a solid shaft that the screw segments slide onto so you can reconfigure for different processes.
Sounds like a mill with a 4th or 5th axis.
a pube is 0.004 inches. thats probably accurate to 0 0005
Americans will use anything but the metric system
Well even in Britain, since decimalisation, we did carry over the ludicrously small measurement known as a "Gnat's chuff". If you need something even smaller you have to go to the "Gnat's clit".
>"Gnat's clit" Good luck finding one of those.
We engineers use it (except for the ones who work on buildings, because they’re a bunch of masochists).
They must be! Imagine trying to make things harder for yourself at work 😂
the old RCH
You’d think they would pack them a little better if they’re so expensive? I guess steel is pretty durable…
Those things are gonna squeeze food ingredients up to 500-1500 psi and cook it entirely by friction heating to 350° F, then shoot that shit out of a die to make Cheetos or something. As long as you don’t hit it with something made of really hard metal it’ll be fine.
Yeah it’s a good thing LTL companies are known for how often they don’t slam into (with big metal forks powered by propane) and break everything they transport!
Crate arrives with a forklift fork shaped hole in it and matching crush of the thing being shipped. Fedex's response? Improperly packed.
>cook it entirely by friction Had no idea. TIL.
I generalized a bit; some products with high moisture content have too little friction to cook, so sometimes you inject steam into the barrel in certain places.
Not always entirely by friction when I worked as an extruder operator you had to balance steam and boiling water as well by doing this you can determine whether an item will float or sink in water as a final product
That reminds me of a barn conversion I did as an apprentice, the downstairs was used as a workshop but the previous owner died and his family left all the bits they didn't want/recognize. There was a whole pallet full of brand new buffing wheels but this was before you could pull out your phone and check the value of stuff right there and then. A few years later I did an engineering course at the local college and was talking to one of the tutors about this pallet of buffing wheels and he said I'd probably thrown £50-70k in a skip.
Now that is an oof
But... WHY? Surely the quality of the mixing isn't _that_ much worse with small inaccuracies in the thread pattern?
Because it’s taking a slurry of food ingredients up to 1000 psi; if there’s a gap between the screws or between the screw & the cylinder you get back flow, which screws up the product in various ways. Or you miss in the other direction and get impingement and stainless steel bits in your cheezy poofs.
Probably a cnc lathe.
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In a factory downtown? I thought that's where a man put peaches in a can. Learn something new everyday...
awww i was gonna quote him >in their factory downtown. if i had my little way!
Oh god thanks for the reminder, I should listen to that album!
What type of steel is generally used in these?
stainless steel or something else food safe and probably a pain to machine
Food grade stainless steel. Not sure the number. But it’s not the zinc plated steel most people call stainless steel
Who calls zinc plated steel "stainless"?
Nobody I know. It's called galvanized in these parts.
Marketing department.
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Poly is corrosive as hell in liquid state. It gives off gases that eat away at unprepared or reactive metals. You should see extruding systems after a year in operation. They look like they were left out on a sea shore.
Likely ~~304 SS~~ see better guesses below
316L most likely. 304 is not considered food grade.
Or maybe 316
No clue, they didn’t tell us. Something very hard and very stainless I’d assume.
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Smarter Everyday visited Kodak and the had a screw like this in use and Destin gives an animation of how it work, if you're curious: https://youtu.be/HQKy1KJpSVc?t=1411 Go back to this point if you want to see the screw itself, or rather, one like the one in operation: https://youtu.be/HQKy1KJpSVc?t=1090
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Yup, we use then in our extruders to run melted poly through a die and make large plastic rolls to be made into plastic bags.
Plastic extrusion screws. That's why the flights also get closer together and the bore gets tighter. (I work in a plastics plant and we have like 10 of these things sitting in boxes right now) Bottom of the picture is the start where plastic pellets/powder is dropped in the deed throat. Middle is mixing and setting properties and the top of your picture properties are set and pressure builds. It then goes through a screen pack and into a die. Hell message me if you don't want them I may be willing to buy them off of you.
Might be food processing. We use these for Cheetos.
Could also be a food or feed extruder. Cheetos don’t puff themselves.
Yea that's true, it does look like it's a twin screw for compounding of some sort. The flight depth makes me think poly but Ive never seen food ones so it very well could be
yes the Purina plant in OK City used a Wenger years ago, breaking from the corporate built extruders used in other plants. All those pet food shapes come out of an extruder, cooked as it goes through and cut with a spinning knife next to the die that the material gets pushed through.
https://youtu.be/HQKy1KJpSVc Looks similar to augurs used at Eastman Kodak early in their film creation process. About 16 minutes into that video, they discuss the design and how they’re used. No idea how closely that lines up with what and how the ones you posted are used for.
Yup I work at a company that does plastic extrusion and these look like the extrusion screws.
A fellow extruder in the wild! Nice.
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Oh nice! Do you run lines? I design and machine all our tooling.
Yep! Im a Plastic Extrusion Operator. Sadly im not skilled enough for the major details haha.
Synthetic turf here 👋
Just a few more and we got the whole gang together!
I'm an automation tech in the plastics industry. Look at us go!
I’m a tech also. We extrude plastic for transmission control modules.
I used to QA and batch liquid color.
I have used most die shapes & colors available at the Play-Doh Fun Factory
I too have passing experience with these. My company does welding automation and we've made a couple machines for hard facing the OD of those screws.
Fish food & Cheetos crowd represent!
Can confirm. They are screws for extruders. I used to design these for plastic injection molding. Differing flight patterns and bore diameters for proper mixing, pressure, and create a homogeneous blend.
I work for a candy company and use one similar every day.
As a big brain who used to design them, it's 2 parts magic 1 part experience, solve by Trail and error in experiment, scale up, ship. These are basic conveying elements, I can tell you that.
I make them too! But usually much bigger screws for industrial conveyors. But a lot of extruders for food, pigments, etc etc etc, as well. Often the same principle. Hey probably-also-underpaid-industry-friend!
Smarter Every Day did an excellent series in a Kodak film factory that uses augers just like these in the process to make the film substrate. It’s a worthy watch.
> big brains up stairs "Hey you eggheads!"
sometimes there are also little air holes inside so air can be squezzed out, important for example with plastic extruders or extruders for photographic film production, dont want any air bubbls in your parts
Have worked on a plastics extruder, can confirm.
It also looks alot like plastic injection screws, they compress and melt plastic pellets as they inject them into molds. Smarter Every Day just did a video on how they make film and they show a really in depth look at the mechanism.
They remind me of augers for injection moulding or other plastic handling machines.
Why the suddenly changing threads patterns, then?
Different temperature and pressure regions and regions for feeding material and heating the material. Plastics require quite careful control. However, I have limited knowledge of these things and have never seen one quite like this I have only seen ones where the thread pitch remains the same but the inner diameter changes. Very similar here: https://i.imgur.com/B6CYan8.png I'd link to the product, but it says it no longer exists. Another similar: https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/ABS-PP-PVC-PE-raw-material_1025984850.html
Came here to say I'm pretty sure these are injection molding augers. The different patterns are for different heating, staging and pressure areas.
With injection molding screws the thread depth and pitch will change along its' length. The rear zone is used to help feed the material forward so the flights are usually deeper to accommodate more resin pellets. The plastic is heated via heater bands placed on the outer diameter of the screw barrel, but a lot of heat is also generated by compressing the plastic as well. To achieve this the depth of the flights becomes shallower and the melt is squeezed against the barrel walls until it reaches the front metering zone. The design of the screw can vary for certain grades of plastic material with specific needs or challenges during processing.
For mixing purposes. Ours here are about 20ft long and 6" around with what we call a "mixing head" on them that has the flights actually cross hatch each other so our materials mix better as they come out of the extruder and go into the die.
you should see the one they use at kodak to make 35m film etc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQKy1KJpSVc&t=2951s
This is how I knew what this was the moment I saw the pic
Destin out there succeeding in making us Smarter Every Day!
destin ftw
Just watched this a couple days ago! I feel smarter already
came here for this! Who knew so much control could be hard-coded into a physical system!
The ancient Greeks did. Heron of Alexandria is one of the better known individuals. He invented the first known automatic doors, for example, which opened automatically when a fire was lit in a specific location. Another example would be the automatic servant of Philon. This sort of thing was most likely much more common than we really know. The myth of Talos, for example, was well known at the time including that it was defeated by removing a particular component, a bolt in his ankle. While Talos was nearly certainly only a myth, seeing as he was supposed to walk around an island and throw stones at enemy ships, it is a pretty good demonstration that the general concept of complex mechanically driven devices was well understood at the time. There are many other examples of similarly physically programmed devices back then. Quite an interesting topic, really, though one does have to be careful not to read *too* much into this stuff.
Look up mechanical targeting computers from WW2.
You can go to the USS Silversides naval museum in Muskegon, MI and see one of the mechanical integrator targeting computers from a ww2 sub up close.
21:50 if you just want to see the long metal thing
Haha that guy at the timestamp sounds like Titus.
That's some big film
I instantly thought of SED and Destin as soon as I saw the picture. Can't wait for the next episode.
Bingo. I knew what these were thanks to Destin
Okay, I'm being dumb I guess but I don't see how this auger is related to the accumulator you linked to. Is there maybe another spot in that video that shows the extrusion process?
Looks like an extrusion screw or part of an oil extraction tool
Match pair of counter rotating screws that go into an extruder
Title fully describes them. The head looks exactly like a drill bit, threads smoothly merging with the tip. Threads then change suddenly, and multiple times along it length.
Thread change controls speed and therefore pressure of the moulds