Patent
1985-11-12
1987-03-24
Abercrombie, Willie G.
17 24, A22C 2508
Patent
active
046513850
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
The present invention relates to an apparatus for feeding fish to a fish processing machine, which apparatus comprises means for orientation of the head and the abdomen of the fish in a desired direction.
Machines which orientate the fish so that they are fed head first into a processing machine have been known for a long time. Furthermore, machines which turn the fish to be processed so that the side thereof faces in a certain direction are known. E.g. the FI Patent Application No. 811371; the DE Patent Specification Nos. 1,293,417, 1,454,085, 1,679,060 and 3,229,502; the NO Patent Specification Nos. 5504 and 28,191; the SE Patent Nos. 324,045 and 340,342 and the U.S. Patent Specification Nos. 3,514,811 and 4,399,588 are mainly concerned with said functions, i.e. feeding the fish head first and the abdominal side thereof facing in a certain direction.
In order to provided a fully automatic method of feeding fish into a processing machine, it is, further, necessary that the fish are fed into the receiving pockets of said machine one by one and at a proper rate. E.g. the NO Patent Specification Nos. 74,699, 75,934 and 107,895; the SE Patent Specification No. 386,357 and the U.S. Patent No. 3,561,041 are concerned with this problem. A disadvantage of these and other commercially available feeding apparatuses is that they are slow and therefore several parallel feeds are required in order to obtain a capacity of filling three to six pockets per second, which generally corresponds to the processing speed. Accordingly, plenty of room is required. If the feeder includes a spike which pierces through the fish (DE Patent Specification No. 1,579,590, SE Patent Specification No. 313,899), the fish may be damaged. A tube or a narrow chute for orientation limits the size of the fish to be processed (e.g. DE Patent Specification Nos. 1,293,416 and 1,579,590 and SE Patent Specification No. 313,899). On the other hand, if the chute is larger, there is the risk that the fish turn so that the abdomen thereof faces in the wrong direction. (NO Patent Specification No. 81,039).
The object of the present invention is to provide a new apparatus for feeding the fish into the receiving pocket of a feed bed of a fish processing machine, processing speed of which may vary within wide limits.
The apparatus according to the invention is mainly characterized in that between the fish orientation means and the fish processing machine is arranged a feed synchronizing means adapted to the speed of the fish processing machine, the receiving end of the feed synchronizing means being dimensioned to be temporarily blocked by received fish so that a subsequent fish, arriving too early with respect to the feed rate of the processing machine, is deflected past the feed synchronizer means.
The invention is based on the utilization of the aerodynamic shape of the fish. The fish is "shot" into the synchronizer, whereby it is fixed between the surface of e.g. a roll and a guide plate, and is further "shot" from the feeding apparatus into the receiving pockets. The feeding rate can be as high as 8 m/s which represents capacity increase in comparison to earlier machines. The feeding apparatus can simultaneously act as a kind of intermediate storage, which further reduces the required space.
In the following the invention will be described in more detail with reference to the attached schematical drawing.
FIG. 1 is a perspective view of an embodiment of the feed apparatus.
FIG. 2 is a side view of a first embodiment of a feed synchronizer.
FIG. 3 shows the arrangement of FIG. 2 as seen from above.
FIG. 4 is a side view of a second embodiment of a feed synchronizer.
In FIG. 1, a buffer storage for fish is designated 1. Its bottom comprises two transport belts 2 and 3 which feed the fish, at a rather rough dosage, to an underlying apparatus 4 for orientation of the fish with respect to head and tail. A vibrating belt 5 with parallel chutes orientates the fish lengthwise, part of the fish moving directly head first between a roller, or a brush 6, and guid
REFERENCES:
patent: 3348260 (1967-10-01), Bartels et al.
patent: 3561041 (1971-02-01), Szymanski et al.
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