Assembly for preparing bushy plants for packing

Details Assembly for preparing bushy plants for packing Assembly for preparing bushy plants for packing

1990-10-04

1992-05-19

Sipos, John

Package making

With contents treating

Reshaping

53515, 53582, 1988039, 99643, B65B 2710, B65B 6300

Patent

active

051136333

DESCRIPTION:

BRIEF SUMMARY
The invention relates to an assembly for preparing bushy plants, especially rose plants for packing.
Such plants, which cultivators ever more often pack and ship individually to customers, usually are too bulky in the condition as gathered and freed from soil to be put directly into a package. Therefore, it is customary to tie such plants together at the shoots and roots. To accomplish that, binder apparatus are known which are used in such a way that a person first holds each individual plant into the apparatus, with one plant end leading, such as the roots, releases a first tying, then pulls the plant out of the apparatus, turns it around, again holds it into the apparatus with the other end leading, releases the second tying, and finally deposits the plant at a place where it can be reached or is moved by an intermediate conveyor so to be reached by another person who operates a cutter means to prune the shoots and the roots. It is cumbersome and not without risk to work on binding and cutting machinery, particularly so if the plants have unwieldy roots and shoots.
It is, therefore, the object of the invention to prepare bush and shrub plants for packing with little use of human labor and without endangering them.
The object is met, in accordance with the invention, by an assembly, comprising
a conveyor which includes retainers for a plant each,
at least one binder means for tying together projecting parts of the plants each held in a retainer, and
at least one cutter means for shortening projecting parts of the plants each held in a retainer.
Projecting parts of the plant are understood to be the roots and/or shoots thereof. It is not always necessary to bind both the roots and the shoots. The roots need not be bound if they are held together as if tied in a subsequent working stage in which the plants are packed. On the other hand, it is conceivable that the shoots of the plants need not be bound because they will be cut back subsequently on the assembly according to the invention to become rather short. In such events it is sufficient for the assembly according to the invention to comprise but a single binding device. For much the same reasons, it may be sufficient if the assembly according to the invention comprises only one cutting device to prune either the roots or the shoots of the plant. In general, however, two cutter means are provided, one to cut back the roots and the other one for the shoots of the plants.
Generally speaking, all the person has to do who works on an assembly according to the invention, is to place plants into one each of the retainers at the beginning of the conveyor. All the rest then can be done automatically, with the usual design of the binding and cutting apparatus disposed along the conveyor.
Advantageous further developments of the invention appear from the subclaims.
Embodiments of an assembly according to the invention will be described in greater detail below with reference to diagrammatic drawings, in which:
FIG. 1 is the plan view of a first assembly according to the invention;
FIG. 2 is the side elevational view in the direction of arrow II in FIG. 1;
FIG. 3 is the plan view of a second assembly according to the invention;
FIG. 4 is the side elevational view in the direction of arrow IV in FIG. 3;
FIG. 5 is an enlarged cutout of FIG. 3, showing further details;
FIG. 6 is the side elevational view belonging to FIG. 5, partly in section in the vertical plane VI--VI;
FIG. 7 is the view in the direction of arrow VII in FIG. 6 and
FIG. 8 is an enlarged cutout of FIG. 4.
The assembly illustrated in FIGS. 1 and 2 comprises an elongated machine frame 10 supporting an endless conveyor 12. In the embodiment shown, the conveyor 12 consists essentially of a pair of parallel chains 14 running around return rollers 16 and drive rollers 18 and being driven in common in the direction of arrow A by a geared engine 20. The two chains 14 are interconnected at regular intervals by carriages 22 which are divided in a central transverse plane each where they are each provided with

REFERENCES:
patent: 2180349 (1939-11-01), De Back
patent: 4095391 (1978-06-01), Anguiano
patent: 4262944 (1981-04-01), Branch
patent: 4885898 (1989-12-01), Khurgin

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