Axial displacement mechanism

Details Axial displacement mechanism Axial displacement mechanism

2000-05-27

2002-08-06

Pezzuto, Robert E. (Department: 3671)

Machine element or mechanism

Rotary member or shaft indexing, e.g., tool or work turret

With means to axially shift shaft

C074S81300L

Reexamination Certificate

active

06427554

ABSTRACT:

This invention relates to an axial displacement mechanism, and more specifically to a axial displacement mechanism specifically adapted for a turret table for use in machinery for the automated manufacture of tin boxes.
Although the following description is provided with exclusive reference to such machinery, it is to be mentioned that the axial displacement mechanism described could easily be applied to any surface which is required to be precisely orientated and disposed with respect to a tool or the like which works on a body or collects such a body from said surface, the precision being required to ensure faultless operation of the tool.
Automated tin box manufacture is accomplished by juxtaposing several different pieces of machinery and providing transfer means therebetween. Tin boxes can be manufactured in a vast number of different shapes and sizes and accordingly a single piece of machinery is required to be sufficiently versatile to enable manufacture of tin boxes in a large number of said shapes and sizes. It will be understood by those skilled in the art that the machinery used has a number of different components which can be exchanged to facilitate the manufacture of different boxes and currently the length of time taken to exchange all these various components to enable a particular set of machines to manufacture a different box shape can be up to an entire day. The invention hereinafter set forth, and also set forth in our co-pending applications have as their object the reduction of this time. Any reduction achievable in the “changeover” time is especially desirable when it is considered that tin box production rates using the machinery described hereinafter may reach 40 per minute.
Tin boxes can contain a wide variety of different goods, such as bottles, chocolates, biscuits, tea, coffee and the like. Manufacturers of such products commonly consider the containment of their product in tins because of the rigidity and durability which the sheet steel, from which such tins are commonly made, provides. Additionally, the containment of a product in a tin box may also suggest that the product therein is of a certain quality, especially as ornate and detailed print effects can be obtained on the surface of the metal plates from which the tin boxes are manufactured. Such effects cannot be achieved, or are achieved only to a much lesser degree by the containment of products in cardboard cartons or receptacles of plastics materials. A tin box in which such a product is contained has the further advantage of being reusable to contain other household items such as screws, nuts bolts, pencils and pens, etc. after the product originally contained therein has been consumed or otherwise utilised.
The various separate machines required in the manufacture of tin boxes are an “Automatic Curling Notching and Beading” machine, a “bodymaker”, a “round and irregular seamer”, and an “end feeder”, each of which has a specific task to perform during the process of tin box manufacture. Each of these is now described.
The first stage in the process of automated tin box manufacture is the profiling of a simple sheet steel, and generally rectangular, blank from which the walls of the tin box are ultimately constituted. The blank is fed through an “Automatic Notching, Curling and Beading” machine, referred to hereinafter as an ANCB machine. This machine consists of a plurality of consecutively driven rollers disposed both above and below the blank as it passes therebetween, each of said rollers performing a forming step on the blank. The particular profile of each blank as it exits the ANCB machine depends on the ultimate shape of the tin, but in general the blank is substantially flat with the exception of a hem provided parallel with one of the longer edges of the blank and proximate thereto, a bead is provided on one of said longer edges, a partial curl is provided around the alternate longer edge, and a pair of hooks oppositely disposed with respect to one another on the shorter edges. Additionally, the ANCB machine has cutting means which notch the corners of the blank to preclude any interference effects which may be caused by said corners either when the blank is profiled and provided with the hooks along its shorter edges, when it is formed into the cross-sectional shape of the tin box, or when wrapped around and attached to the base of said tin box.
The hem provides a surface behind which the beaded lip of a tin lid can engage to inhibit the removal of a lid separately formed and applied around the uppermost edge of the tin box, the bead is provided to hide the sharp longer edge of the blank which ultimately forms said uppermost edge of the tin box, the partial curl on the alternate longer edge of the blank is provided to facilitate the attachment of the blank, after same has been formed into the desired cross-sectional shape, to the base of the tin box, and the hooks provided along the shorter edges of the blank facilitate the connection of said edges to one another after the forming operation.
The profiled blank is then fed from the ANCB machine into a bodymaker by a feed mechanism which generally comprises a pair of reciprocating feed bars whose motion is best described as being that of a “walking beam” in conjunction with “disappearing guides” which simultaneously urge the profiled blank towards and over a forming mandrel and precisely align said blank thereon. The disappearing guides are rotated away from the blank when it is held in contact with the uppermost portion of the mandrel, which is generally of similar shape to the desired cross-sectional shape of the tin box to be manufactured, by a mandrel clamping arrangement. The removal of the disappearing guides (so-called because they are retracted and seem to “disappear” within the machine during the forming of the blank around the mandrel) allows a pair of forming wings pivotally connected together and disposed above the mandrel to rotate about their pivot and form said blank, which is at this stage still substantially planar, around the said mandrel. The forming operation performed by the wings also constrains the oppositely disposed flanges on the shorter edges of the blank to interlock on the underside of the mandrel whereupon a second forming tool compresses the metal of the blank in the interlocked region to form the vertical seam within the wall of the tin box. During all forming operations the blank is clamped against the upper surface of said mandrel by said mandrel clamping arrangement.
The bodymaker thus forms the walls of the tin box into the desired cross-sectional whereafter the hollow wall section is fed into the round and irregular seamer which seamingly attaches a base provided with a peripheral flange by simultaneously compressing and deforming said peripheral flange and the partial curl provided on one of the edges of the blank together to form a seam. In practice, the bodymaker is responsible for the formation of the hooks on the shorter edges of the blank to facilitate connection of said edges to one another.
The seamer is conventionally juxtaposed with the bodymaker and an end feeder, these two pieces of machinery providing the body of the tin box and its base respectively which are connected together by the seamer. The seamer is also provided with a turret table which intermittently rotates, the intermittency dependent on the rate of production of tin boxes, the duration of the various forming steps throughout the production process, and the rate of infeed of blanks.
This invention is specifically concerned with the provision of an axial displacement mechanism for the turret plate of the seamer which ensures precise angular orientation of said turret plate with respect to the various stations which said table serves, and also precise axial disposition with respect to each of these stations and to the seaming chuck of the seamer.
The turret plates currently in use on seaming machines are generally circular or quadrangular and rotate periodically by approximately 90° every rotation and also always in

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