Conveyors: power-driven – Conveyor arrangement for selecting among plural sources or... – By loading or unloading section at selected one of a...
Patent
1985-01-30
1987-01-06
Valenza, Joseph E.
Conveyors: power-driven
Conveyor arrangement for selecting among plural sources or...
By loading or unloading section at selected one of a...
198839, B65G 4734
Patent
active
046339965
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
The present invention relates to the selective diversion of individual objects moving along a conveyor belt in such a way that the diversion can be effected of any one object from a stream of objects without disturbing the movement of objects immediately preceding or following at a rate of diversion not hitherto possible.
In the design of certain conveyor systems the requirement to achieve the automatic highspeed sortation of packages frequently arises. For instance, a particularly common application of this nature is for sorting packages at a post office into specific mail destination categories. In such a case all the packages are placed one by one on a single conveyor which passes across the ends of a number of chutes. As each package is placed on the conveyor its destination is entered on a keyboard and the package is then automatically diverted into the prescribed destination chute by a mechanism mounted on the conveyor adjacent to the chute.
The method of signalling the prescribed diverter to operate, when a package arrives, varies for different conveyor manufacturers but more recently the use of microprocessors and limit switches along the conveyor has been employed and particularly accurate signalling to the one or more diverter mechanisms involved can be guaranteed.
The main requirements for a diverter mechanism are that it should effectively transfer a nominated package from a conveyor without interfering with the passage along the conveyor of other packages not nominated to be diverted by that diverter. Because of the need not to interfere with packages not destined to be diverted and at the same time to enable a high total throughput along the conveyor to be obtained, the diverter must operate in a short length of time and space along the conveyor, at the same time the impact of the diverter upon the package must not cause any damage to the package.
One particular known system uses a pusher plate which extends across the conveyor and retracts when the package has been diverted. As the pusher plate extends across the conveyor, the package to be diverted is deposited on another conveyor. The disadvantage of this system is that it is only suitable for slow speed application as high speed operations would cause package damage.
In order to overcome the problem of a pusher plate having to traverse the full width of the conveyor and return, where the nature of the item to be diverted permits, another design of diverter employes chains running through a roller conveying surface. A pair of chains may be fitted with pusher dogs to pass between rollers of a conveyor at right angles to the path of the conveyor. However this device is suitable only for items of a constant size because of the necessity for the dogs to engage evenly.
A variation of the chain diverter used with roller conveyor is to employ a single chain, to place it at an angle through the rollers of the main conveyor. This design involves the raising and lowering of the chain to divert selected packages. The diversion operation itself is effective, but problems arise in the mechanism for raising and lowering the chain and the guiding of the chain itself.
Also since the raising and lowering of the chain crosses the whole of the main conveyor, this necessarily determines the minimum gap between packages and hence limits the speed of operation particularly where there is a mixture of long and short packages being carried.
In further elaboration of this last disadvantage which is common to most currently used diverter mechanisms, the spacing of all packages irrespective of length must be equal to the length of the longest item plus clearance, whereas, as will be shown in the present invention, spacing is only required by the individual length of each package plus clearance.
An earlier invention of the applicant consists of a conveyor diverter mechanism comprising an endless chain fitted at intervals with diverter sections which may be drawn across a conveyor to engage objects to be diverted, otherwise sections of the chain not fitted with divert
REFERENCES:
patent: 3232417 (1966-02-01), Muller
patent: 3587830 (1974-06-01), Calistrat
patent: 4328889 (1982-05-01), Maxted
Shane Kyle E.
Timalara Pty. Limited
Valenza Joseph E.
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