Engineering
Engineering
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280px-ADurerAugerBayonne

Albrecht Dürer's pen-and-ink drawing of a man using an auger, ca 1496 (Musée Bonnat, Bayonne, France)

An auger is a device for moving material or liquid by means of a rotating helical flighting.

How it works[]

On rotation the material is moved along the axis of rotation. A drill bit uses this mechanism to remove shavings from a hole being drilled. For some uses the helical flighting is enclosed in a tube, for other uses the flighting is not encased.

Uses[]

General[]

An Archimedes screw is essentially an auger that lifts water from a lake or river.

A drill bit uses this mechanism during drilling.

Snowblowers use an auger to move snow towards an impeller where it is thrown into the discharge chute. A Zamboni uses an auger to remove loose ice particles from the surface of the ice.

Plumbers use a plumber's snake, a flexible auger, to remove obstructions from pipes.

Hand auger is also used for drilling shallow bore wells.

In agriculture[]

Combines use both enclosed and non enclosed augers to move the unthreshed crop into the threshing mechanism and to move the grain into and out of the machine's hopper.

The grain auger is used in agriculture to move grain from trucks and grain carts into grain storage bins. A grain auger may be powered by an electric motor, a tractor through the power take-off, or sometimes an internal combustion engine mounted on the auger. The helical flighting rotates inside a long metal tube moving the grain upwards. On the lower end, a hopper receives grain from the truck or grain cart. A chute on the upper end guides the grain into the destination location.

See also[]

  • List of farm implements
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