Conveyors: power-driven – Conveyor system for arranging or rearranging stream of items – By queueing items from quantity source of items into stream...
Patent
1983-02-16
1985-10-01
Valenza, Joseph E.
Conveyors: power-driven
Conveyor system for arranging or rearranging stream of items
By queueing items from quantity source of items into stream...
198478, 1984741, B65G 4726
Patent
active
045440590
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
The invention relates to an apparatus for combining bottles or similar objects fed on an inlet conveyor, on which they form inclined rows into a single row on an outlet conveyor. Such so-called bottle single filers are used e.g. in breweries in front of the machinery in a bottling line which requires single file inlet, such as filler crowners, labelling machines and inspecting machines.
Generally, single filing of a wide stream of bottles takes place gradually through the aid of converging rails simultaneously with the bottles being transferred to conveyors of greater speed. In such conventional bottle single filers blocking or bridge formations are frequent. As the mutual coefficient of friction (.mu.) bottle to bottle of cleaned and wet return bottles is particularly great (.mu.>0.8), blockings occur especially often in return bottle plants, even if a very small single filing angle is used.
When transported in several rows on traditional conveyors, the bottles tend to occupy as little space as possible, corresponding to a so-called triangulation pattern in which the central points of adjoining bottles, projected on a horizontal plane, form corners in equilateral triangles. It can be shown that the condition to be met to bring objects of a circular cross-section out of triangulation by rail reaction alone is that .mu.<1/tg60=0.577.
In traditional return bottle single filers, mechanical aids, such as horizontally working vibrators and excentric-controlled rail movements are therefore used or measures are taken in order to reduce the risk of blocking.
The drawbacks of the traditional bottle single filer increase with increasing capacity and include
1. poor operational reliability,
2. high level of noise, which even when acoustically attenuated exceeds 90 dB(A),
3. generation of wear rings on the bottles because of wedge effect, and
4. great space requirement in the longitudinal direction.
The object of the invention is to provide an apparatus of the present type which can single file bottles on a short transport stretch without any risk of blocking and without using vibrators or other means to move the rails.
This object is achieved by constructing the apparatus so that it has a plurality of oblong separators mounted and controlled so as to extend across the inlet conveyor substantially in parallel with the rows of bottles and to move in a closed path in which, from above, they move down between two rows of bottles and follow them during the last part of their movement on the inlet conveyor towards an inclined guide rail which forms a smaller angle with the inlet conveyor than the separators and transfers the bottles to the outlet conveyor. In this construction the separators, which are moved in between the inclined rows of bottles, serve to control the individual bottles, to thereby prevent the above-mentioned bridge formation of the bottles on the conveyor. It has been found that such a bottle single filer, even with a great capacity, improves the operational reliability significantly.
Even though empty spaces should occur in the triangulation pattern, this will not produce blocking. Likewise, normally occurring out of round portions or other minor deviations usually do not cause interruptions in the operation.
The circumstance that the bottles are separated by the separators, which can expediently be made of a plate of steel coated with plastics as stated in claim 4, partly reduces the noise level in the single filing area significantly, partly eliminates overloading of the bottles which in traditional single filers takes place by wedge effect combined with mechanical aids.
It has moreover been found that the length required to incorporate an embodiment of the stated single filer to combine five rows of beer bottles to a single row, can be reduced to approximately 1 m, while a corresponding traditional single filer requires a length of 3 to 5 m.
When the path of movement of the separators is circular, a particularly simple construction can be obtained. An embodiment of such a construction is charac
REFERENCES:
patent: 2805755 (1957-09-01), Jones
patent: 2941650 (1960-06-01), Clinton
patent: 3107775 (1963-10-01), Dardaine et al.
patent: 3237759 (1966-03-01), Solski et al.
patent: 4041677 (1977-08-01), Reid
patent: 4205744 (1980-06-01), Timmons et al.
patent: 4231463 (1980-11-01), Vamvakas
De Forenede Bryggerier A/S
Shane Kyle E.
Valenza Joseph E.
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