Material or article handling – Apparatus for moving intersupporting articles into – within,... – Stack forming apparatus
Patent
1996-06-24
1999-03-23
Krizek, Janice L.
Material or article handling
Apparatus for moving intersupporting articles into, within,...
Stack forming apparatus
4147937, B65G 5714
Patent
active
058850554
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
This invention is concerned with improvements in or relating to collation assemblies, that is, assemblies adapted for use in the collation and stacking of "articles", viz. manufactured building components. The invention is particularly, although not exclusively, concerned with improvements in collation assemblies for use with a concrete roof tile manufacturing plant.
The important steps in the process of concrete roof tile manufacture are the formation of tiles on metal pallets, curing the mortar, depalleting the cured tiles and the packaging of the end product. The main use of collation assemblies is for creating stacks of cured tiles ready for packaging.
In their passage to and through collation assemblies the tiles may be subject to shock loads due to the sudden stop-start conditions under which known collation assemblies have operated. Under such conditions the tiles may suffer damage. Such damage may be obvious from visual inspection, which will enable the damaged tiles to be removed before the tiles are packaged.
However, often the resulting damage is in the form of hairline cracks not visible to the human eye, which cracks only become evident due to handling or exposure to inclement weather conditions in use, and lead to corners breaking off tiles. This obviously leads to loss of goodwill between the manufacture and end-user.
It is therefore an object of this invention to provide an improved collation assembly suitable for use in a tile plant wherein the shock loading on tiles fed to and through the assembly is reduced to a minimum, that is, a "no-load" or substantially "no-load" condition, so that the stacking of tiles may be accomplished at high speed, i.e. up to 200 tiles per minute.
Such an object is met in part by the assemblies disclosed in EPS 0173436 and EPS 0268438; however, the assemblies are cumbersome and difficult to integrate into conventional concrete roof tile plants.
The present invention seeks to mitigate or overcome the disadvantages of the prior art and conveniently provides a collator assembly adapted for use in forming stacks of articles as hereinbefore defined, said assembly comprising a collator having first and second supports and drive means associated with said first and second supports respectively for moving said first and second supports, when the assembly is in use, in turn through the same spacial path, the spacial path comprising an operative run at an upstream end of which, when the assembly is in use, articles are fed seriatim to the collator to form a stack of such articles on the first and second supports in turn, the spacial path also comprising an inoperative run through which, when the assembly is in use, the first and second supports, having successively had a stack of articles removed therefrom at a downstream end of said operative run, are thereafter successively moved by the drive means at a rate commensurate with returning said first or second support to the upstream end of the operative run as the second or first support, having passed through said operative run, approaches the downstream end thereof.
Preferably the drive means comprises at least one endless carrier element for each of the first and second supports respectively and conveniently the drive means comprises two endless carrier elements for each of the first and second supports respectively.
In one preferred embodiment provided by the invention the carrier elements associated with the first and second supports respectively extend about associated driver and idler wheels mounted in the assembly at or towards opposite ends of the operative and inoperative runs of the spacial path and the driven and idler wheels at respective ends of the operative and inoperative runs of the spacial path are arranged on coincident axes or substantially so.
Conveniently the carrier elements are provided by endless chains and the driver and idler wheels therefor by sprockets.
The collator assembly described hereinbefore may also be provided with infeed means operative, when the assembly is in use, to deliver artic
REFERENCES:
patent: 3921826 (1975-11-01), Rice et al.
patent: 4712361 (1987-12-01), Oberoi
patent: 4867626 (1989-09-01), Oberoi
Lyons Nicholas
Mears Rolf David
Rapp Helmut
Srostlik Peter
Thor Straten Dietrich
Krizek Janice L.
Redland Technologies Limited
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