The screenless hammer mill, like regular hammer mills, is used to pound grain. However, rather than a screen, it uses air flow to separate small particles from larger ones.
Conventional hammer mills in poor and remote areas, such as many parts of Africa, suffer from the problem that screens break easily, and cannot be easily bought, made or repaired. Thus regular hammer mills break down and fall into disuse. The screenless hammer mill uses air flow to separate small particles from larger ones, rather than a screen, and is thus more reliable.
The screenless hammer mill is claimed to be 25% cheaper and much more energy efficient than regular hammer mills, as well as more reliable.
It was designed by Amy Smith of MIT.
Famous quotes containing the words hammer and/or mill:
“He asked water, and she gave him milk; she brought forth butter in
a lordly dish.
She put her hand to the nail, and her right hand to the workmen’s
hammer; and with the hammer she smote Sis’e-ra, she smote off his
head, when she had pierced and stricken through his temples.”
—Bible: Hebrew Judges (l. V, 25–26)
“Mathematics may be compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship, which grinds your stuff to any degree of fineness; but, nevertheless, what you get out depends on what you put in; and as the grandest mill in the world will not extract wheat flour from peascods, so pages of formulae will not get a definite result out of loose data.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895)