Glass manufacturing – With means above mold to take-out or transfer product
Patent
1995-07-10
1997-12-02
Czaja, Donald E.
Glass manufacturing
With means above mold to take-out or transfer product
65239, 65241, 294115, 294116, C03B 904, C03B 944, C03B 1100, C03B 1300
Patent
active
056931131
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates generally to controlled handling of articles during article processing, including article gripping for processing and release following processing. In particular, the invention concerns a gripper apparatus for selective gripping of a row of fragile articles for their pick up from a moving surface, and subsequent release to return those articles to the moving surface. The invention is applicable to gripping and release of rows of glass containers, such as bottles, moving on a conveyer, such as a lehr conveyer, and it will be convenient to hereinafter describe the invention in relation to that exemplary application. It is to be appreciated, however, that the invention is not limited to that application.
Australian patent 631966 and international (PCT) patent application PCT/AU92/00627 disclose methods and apparatus for dip coating the exterior surface of glass bottles in order to increase their resistance and impact strengths. The methods and apparatus are applied to moving rows of heated glass bottles exiting continuously from a lehr on a lehr conveyer. In general terms, each row of moving bottles is in turn gripped and picked up from the conveyer, and held in upright stable suspension for dipping into a bath of coated material so as to apply a thin coating of material to each bottle exterior surface. Following dipping, the coating is at least partially cured, and the bottles are eventually returned to the moving lehr conveyer and released for conventional downstream processing.
The prior apparatus has pick up mechanisms for releasably gripping successive rows of bottles at an upper region thereof and picking them up from the lehr conveyer for moving them along a conveying path during dipping and curing. The pick up mechanisms subsequently reposition the coated bottles back on the lehr conveyer, and release their grip so that the bottles are returned to the conveyer.
Typically, glass bottles are carried on lehr conveyers in closely spaced apart lateral rows each having up to 48 bottles, and travel at speeds of up to about 600 bottles per minute. Production efficiency requirements at bottle manufacturing plants dictate that this bottle volume and rate be maintained, so that the introduction into bottle processing of any additional processing step, such as dip coating, necessitates that it be achieved without any significant affect on the overall bottle processing. Accordingly, the dip coating apparatus has been required to pick up the moving bottle rows from the lehr conveyor, coat the bottles and then return the coated bottles to the conveyor without disturbing movement of bottles either out of the lehr or downstream of the coating procedure.
A difficulty with the prior dip coating apparatus has been consistency in orderly bottle pick up from and return to the lehr conveyor. While the pick up mechanisms of the prior apparatus are able to achieve gripping and release of wide bottle rows, that has not occured with acceptable consistency. In particular, it has been found that sometimes not all bottles in a row are gripped for pick up by the pick up mechanisms, while at other times a complete row is not gripped or picked up. Moreover, sometimes bottles that are initially gripped and picked up are held incorrectly so that they inadvertantly drop from the pick up mechanisms back on to the conveyor and break. This makes stable quality control very difficult to maintain. Further, where the bottles are not properly picked up or put down, they may be knocked over on the lehr conveyor by a passing pick up mechanism, starting a chain reaction of bottle fall along the lehr conveyor creating havoc in the production line.
OBJECTS AND SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
It is an object of the present invention to alleviate this difficulty through the provision of an improved article gripper apparatus.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a gripper apparatus which can be reliably operated to consistently grip moving fragile articles, such as bottles, for pick u
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patent: 4636241 (1987-01-01), Nebelung
patent: 5211992 (1993-05-01), Newton et al.
Dries Hugo
Seidel Thorsten
Czaja Donald E.
International Partners In Glass Research
Ruller Jacqueline A.
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