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Ashburton Guardian, Volume 1, Issue 105, 27 May 1880, Page 4 (Supplement)

Magnets in Flour Mills.—How modem 1 improvements in machinery may _ cause, trouble in other|processes connected with the same line of industry, and how science may be called in to remedy the difficulty, has been well illustrated recently, in a little matter connected with flour manufacture at the West. The “mechanical harvesters” that have been so extensively introduced bind up the wheat sheaves with wire, and bits of this wire have done much mischief to the machinery of the mills where the wheat was ground. At one time it seemed probable that the millers would refuse to grind wheat which had been harvested by the wire-bind-ing machines; but at this juncture it occurred to someone that magnets might be used to separate the stray bits of iron from the wheat as it was supplied to the grinding apparatus, and a simple device was arranged for that purpose. The result has, been per-' fectly satisfactory, while it has shown that the mechanical harvesters were not solely responsible for the troubles which led to the invention. A Chicago paper says j—The introduction of magnets into all the great mills of Minneapolis, and a great many elsewhere, has been a revelation to the millers who: complained of wire in wheat. , Not only have the magnets captured all the stray pieces of iron bands, and thus removed the last and only objection urged against wire-binding harvesters, hut they have revealed the startling fact that of the scraps of iron , and. steel that find their way to the mills mixed with wheat, fully one-half are something besides pieces of wire, and a larger proportion of these are of such a nature as to be even more dangerous to mill machinery. The magnets gather everything of .this kind with the certainty of fate, and millers, are free to acknowledge that their introduction is a blessing the value of which cannot over-estimated.. ■ The device is so simple and cheap, and the remedy for the . evils complained of is so complete, that "farthers and manufacturers wilr never " again hear any complaints from inillera, growing out of selfr : binding harvesters and . wire tific American. ; h,,.