Conveyors: power-driven – Conveyor system for arranging or rearranging stream of items – By queueing items from quantity source of items into stream...
Patent
1983-07-27
1985-11-12
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...
198456, 198384, B65G 4726
Patent
active
045522626
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
The present invention relates to an article feeding apparatus, particularly effective for use in sorting articles of different sizes, such as agricaltural and aquatic products, by size, and feeding them.
It is customary to sort agricaltural and aquatic products, such as vegetables and fruits and fishes and shellfishes, by size, prior to shipping them to the market, and to this end, there has been used a sorting device equipped with a projected area measuring mechanism or the like. Such sorting devices are designed so that after the projected areas of articles are measured one by one, the articles are sorted on the basis of the measured values and then fed to the next process. To achieve this object, it is required that before articles are fed to the sorting device, they be put in ordered arrangement for accurate measurement of projected areas and that the articles being continuously fed be maintained with a suitable distance therebetween which is needed for individual measurement of projected areas. Among the conventional devices, however, none have been found which are capable of satisfactorily performing the function of retaining a required distance between articles to be measured; thus, they have been very poor in article sorting efficiency.
A principal object of the present invention is to provide an article feeding apparatus which is capable of eliminating the aforesaid drawback found in the conventional apparatuses.
To this end, an apparatus according to the invention comprises a plurality of feed troughs adapted to be individually vibrated and disposed side by side with each other with their take-in ends formed as flat surfaces in juxtaposed relation in a plane, a plurality of arranging conveyors parallel with each other and each being effective to cause articles being fed thereon from its associated feed trough to pass therealong in a line, pool hoppers disposed at the take-out ends of the arranging conveyors and adapted to open and close, a bucket conveyor for feeding to the next process the articles dropped from the pool hoppers one by one into buckets supported to turn around the axes of pivots, and means dispersed at a predetermined position in the path of travel of the bucket conveyor and designed so that even if a plurality of articles are dropped into a bucket, they can be separated thereby, the arrangement being such that only a single article dropped into a single bucket can be fed to the next process.
The described and other objects and features of the present invention will become more apparent from the following description to be given with reference to the accompanying drawings; in which
FIG. 1 is a schematic plan view of an apparatus of this invention;
FIG. 2 is a sectional view taken along the line II--II in FIG. 1, schematically showing feed troughs;
FIG. 3 is a perspective view of the feed troughs;
FIG. 4 is an enlarged view of a portion of FIG. 1, showing arranging conveyors and pool hoppers;
FIG. 5 is a schematic view taken in the direction of the line V--V in FIG. 4;
FIGS. 6-9 are perspective views of various forms of bucket;
FIG. 10 is a perspective view of article separating means and bucket conveyor rails;
FIG. 11 is a diagrammatic plan view of the article separating means; and
FIG. 12 is a schematic side view illustrating the action of the bucket conveyor.
An embodiment of the present invention will now be described with reference to the drawings wherein the invention is embodied in an article feeding apparatus with a sorting mechanism, in which potatoes dropped into buckets are imagewise treated by a television camera to compute their areas and are sorted on the basis of the areas into, for example, Class S(small size), Class M (medium size) and Class L (large size).
In FIG. 1, the numeral 1 denotes a container for collecting potatoes 2; 3 denotes a feed table adapted to be vibrated by a suitable means disposed above the level of the container 1 so as to impart articles thereon advance movement; and 4 denotes a transfer conveyor disposed in an inclined bridge fashion betwee
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patent: 3409118 (1968-11-01), Meyer
patent: 3469672 (1969-09-01), Stutske et al.
patent: 3535847 (1970-10-01), Strohmeier et al.
Iwamoto Yoshio
Murakami Katsuhiko
Kabushiki Kaisha Ishida Koki Seisakusho
Shane Kyle E.
Valenza Joseph E.
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