Helical Blades: Versatile Applications Across Diverse Scenarios

A helical blade, a simple spiral-shaped strip of metal or other material, generates powerful axial thrust and radial mixing force through its rotational movement around a central axis. This basic yet efficient working principle transcends the limitations of a single device or industry, making it an indispensable core component in modern industrial and everyday life infrastructure.

Core Functions: Thrust and Mixing

All application scenarios are based on two key functions generated by the rotation of the helical blade:

Axial Thrust: Like a screw drilling into wood, propelling material forward along the axis.

Radial Mixing/Agitation Force: The disturbance, scattering, and overturning effect of the blade edge on the material.

Ubiquitous Application Scenarios:

Material Handling and Conveying:

King of Bulk Material Conveying: Screw conveyors are one of the most commonly used equipment for handling granular, powdery, and small lump materials (grains, cement, fertilizers, mineral powder, coal powder, biomass pellets, plastic pellets, etc.). Their simple structure, good sealing performance, high space utilization, and multi-angle conveying capabilities (horizontal, inclined, vertical) are irreplaceable.

Solving Feeding Problems: As we discussed in detail before, in crushers (especially dual-shaft/single-shaft shear crushers), helical blades are the core of forced feeding, solving the clogging problems of fluffy, entangled, and wet-sticky materials, ensuring efficient crushing.

Lifting and Feeding: Used as a key component in equipment such as elevators (feeding screw of bucket elevators) and feeders (stable and uniform feeding).

Mixing and Agitation:

Efficient Mixer: Screw mixers/blenders are widely used in food (mixing flour, fillings), chemical (mixing raw materials), building materials (mixing dry mortar), feed (mixing nutrients), pharmaceutical and other industries. Different types of helical blades (such as ribbon, paddle) are designed to achieve faster mixing speeds and more uniform results.

Material Homogenization: Unloading/loosening screws installed in large silos and hoppers can prevent material bridging, promote material flow, and play a homogenization role.

Processing and Manufacturing:

Extrusion Molding: The core of screw extruders (used for plastics, food, chemicals, etc.) is the helical blade (screw). It heats, mixes, melts, and compresses the material, and finally pushes the melt through a die for extrusion molding (plastic pipes, profiles, noodles, puffed food, etc.). The structural design and compression ratio of the screw are critical.

Compression Dewatering: Screw presses/dewatering machines use the gradually decreasing pitch or shaft diameter of the helical blade to apply increasing squeezing pressure to the material, achieving solid-liquid separation. It is often used in food waste treatment, sewage treatment (sludge dewatering), fruit and vegetable juicing, oil pressing, etc.

Granulation and Compaction: In granulators/pelletizers, the helical blade pushes the mixed powder to the die for extrusion molding, producing feed pellets, biomass pellet fuel, etc.

Food Processing Field:

Dough Mixing and Kneading: In the dough mixers of bread and biscuit production lines, the helical blade undertakes the core work of mixing and kneading the dough.

Material Conveying: In food processing assembly lines, screw conveyors are a reliable way to ensure hygienic and efficient material transfer (such as candies, potato chips, grains).

Quantitative Feeding: Screws are used to precisely control the amount of food ingredients added to mixing tanks or packaging machines.

Agriculture and Environment:

Sowing and Fertilizing: The core seed/fertilizer discharge mechanism of precision seeders/fertilizers often adopts a helical blade structure to achieve uniform and quantitative sowing or fertilization.

Grain Storage and Handling: A large number of screw conveyors are used in grain depot operations such as inbound and outbound conveying, cleaning, and transferring.

Biomass Processing: Equipment for crushing, conveying, and feeding biomass raw materials such as straw and wood chips into boilers cannot be separated from helical blades.

Waste Treatment: From feeding garbage crushers, conveying on sorting lines, to turning compost materials (specially designed helical turning machines) and dewatering, helical blades participate throughout the entire process.

Special Applications in Specific Industries:

Tunneling and Excavation: The core excavation system of shield machines/TBMs—the screw conveyor behind the cutter head—is responsible for safely and controllably transporting the muck (soil or rock debris) cut by the cutter head out of the sealed excavation chamber, which is crucial to ensuring excavation efficiency and construction safety.

Aerospace/Precision Industry: Small, precise helical structures may be used to propel special fluids, fuels, or perform precision metering (such as certain valves, propellant delivery systems).