Fluent material handling – with receiver or receiver coacting mea – Plural filling means
Reexamination Certificate
2000-09-11
2001-11-06
Maust, Timothy L. (Department: 3751)
Fluent material handling, with receiver or receiver coacting mea
Plural filling means
C141S018000, C141S083000, C141S131000, C141S145000, C141S237000, C141S238000, C141S239000, C141S240000, C209S920000, C053S052000, C053S246000, C053S505000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06311743
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a device for feeding tablets and the like to a packaging machine.
The present invention is advantageously used, preferably in pharmaceutical field, for feeding and placing tablets or pills into respective blisters made in a blister band fed to a blister packaging machine. The following description will refer to this blister packaging machine, however the invention can be exploited in more general way.
DESCRIPTION OF THE PRIOR ART
Disc-like or oblong tablets or pills are fed to a packaging machine by a feeding device usually including a rotating container or a basin, which contains a mass of tablets moving in a circular direction, substantially continuous.
A part of a horizontal flat bottom wall constituting the rotating basin bottom, features semi-circular ribs, which define channels for feeding and orienting the tablets.
Each of the channels opens in the region of a relative slot made in the bottom wall and communicates with an upper end of a corresponding vertical tubular duct, through which the tablets go downwards.
The lower end of the vertical tubular duct is situated over the blister band, that is made of heat-formable material and moves inside the blister packaging machine.
Therefore, along the tubular channels, groups of tablets are formed which go down one after another toward respective blisters of the blister band, so as to fill the blisters.
During normal operation of the packaging machine, the tubular channels get frequently jammed by tablets which close the channels. This results in the stop of the tablets downward movement.
In particular, the tubular channel can often get obstructed during feeding tablets of rounded shape and/or with smoothed edges, because with this type of tablets, it is frequent that one tablet slides down immediately after the previous one, placing itself partially over the previous one and causing the obstruction of the tubular channel.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The object of the present invention is to propose a device for feeding tablets, which avoids the above mentioned problem.
A device for feeding tablets and the like in a packaging machine, obtained according to a present invention includes a rotating container, which contains a mass of tablets and features a bottom wall, a part of which is equipped with tablets feeding channels communicating with relative slots made in said bottom wall; and conveying means for conveying said tablets along a predetermined feeding path and releasing the tablets into respective blisters of a blister band, which moves inside the packaging machine, said conveying means communicating with said slots; the device being characterized in that said conveying means include a plate equipped with at least two grooves, arranged one beside the other and defining respective conveying channels for said tablets and a covering element, coupled with said plate, so as to move with respect to said plate; actuator means connected at least to said covering element, so as to drive the covering element to oscillate with respect to the plate, in order to facilitate the transport of the tablets along the conveying channels.
The conveying channels are preferably vertical and define a vertical direction for the tablets along a straight portion of the path.
The covering element is driven to move alternatively due to the push of actuator means in a direction parallel to the tablets feeding direction.
REFERENCES:
patent: 4750318 (1988-06-01), Matsuzawa
patent: 5522512 (1996-06-01), Archer et al.
patent: 5802804 (1998-09-01), Esposti et al.
Coleman Sudol Sapone P.C.
I,M.A. Industria Macchine Automatiche S.p.A.
Maust Timothy L.
Sapone William J.
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