Classifying – separating – and assorting solids – Precedent preparation of items or materials to facilitate... – Sorting special items or sorting by methods and apparatus...
Patent
1992-10-21
1995-05-30
Dayoan, D. Glenn
Classifying, separating, and assorting solids
Precedent preparation of items or materials to facilitate...
Sorting special items or sorting by methods and apparatus...
209583, 209615, 209706, 209937, 209942, 209566, B07C 502
Patent
active
054194393
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
As used herein the terms "cleaning" and "laundry" and their derivatives and counterparts refer to both dry cleaning (without water) and wet cleaning, and these terms may be used interchangeably to refer to both the act or process of washing and pressing and the things washed and the place where it is done. It is also contemplated that the method and apparatus of the present invention can be used to sort other items, such as uniforms, fabric samples, carpeting pieces, machined parts, tires, or the like. Furthermore, the present invention can be used in any industry where numerous items to be sorted can be identified by unique information and can be moved by the mechanisms of the invention. For the purpose of the present invention the items to be sorted are laundered garments hung on conventional wire hangers.
A commercial cleaner receives items to be cleaned from a number of different accounts. One account may be a large manufacturing facility with hundreds of workers, each having his or her own uniform or garment. A commercial cleaner normally cannot efficiently clean laundry or other items by handling items on a single account basis. The cleaning process is more efficient when the full capacity of machines is used requiring several accounts' items to be grouped together for cleaning. Thus, items from several accounts may be mixed and cleaned as a load to efficiently utilize cleaning equipment. Commercial laundry cleaning operations are successful because they process a large number of garments together in large machines.
Where the account is a facility that has a large number of garments being used by its workers, the garments must be arranged for delivery in some rational order so that workers are not spending inordinate time and effort locating their shirts or uniforms. Since the soiled garments are being returned to the same cleaners routinely for laundering, a means for identifying the garments can be attached permanently or removably to the garment. If affixed permanently, the cleaning operation does not have to attach new identification tags to the soiled garment every time it is received for cleaning. One means for identifying garments is by using conventional bar code strips affixed to the garments and read by a bar code reader. This identification system also eliminates the need for the individual account to sort soiled garments before being sent for cleaning.
In the uniform rental industry there normally is no invoice nor ticket to match. The identification information is permanently affixed to the garment, and the batches of laundry are kept together.
In the commercial cleaning of residential customers' garments, such as business shirts, a time consuming element of the sorting process is the step of separating the lot of cleaned items and assembling them with the appropriate ticket, remembering that a single ticket may contain several items of cleaning. Conventionally, a worker picks the first item in the lot off the rack, looks at the identifying data thereon, places the item with the appropriate ticket, and proceeds to the next item in the lot. This represents three opportunities for worker error. Because the cleaned items cannot be maintained in any particular order in the machines during cleaning, they must be sorted by hand by visually checking and pairing numbers after cleaning. Accordingly, it will be appreciated that it would be highly desirable to unite each item in a lot with their appropriate tickets without manually handling each item at each step of the reassembly process.
A problem associated with the sorting process that occurs after garments are laundered is that a worker must physically handle the tag to read the identification data which may consists of a four, five or even six or more digit number or combination of numbers and letters, creating an opportunity for error in reading the data. Even when being extremely careful, a worker is prone either to misread the identifying data or to transpose digits and thereby place a garment with the wrong ti
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