Conveyors: power-driven – Conveyor system for establishing and moving a group of items – By shifting group of items simultaneously from stream...
Reexamination Certificate
1999-02-22
2001-01-09
Ellis, Christopher P. (Department: 3652)
Conveyors: power-driven
Conveyor system for establishing and moving a group of items
By shifting group of items simultaneously from stream...
C198S463200
Reexamination Certificate
active
06170635
ABSTRACT:
DESCRIPTION
The present invention relates to a device for handling articles of the type described, for example, in EP-B-0 292 378.
Such devices are currently employed in various sectors of technology, a case in point being the packaging of food products or hygienic and sanitary articles, and, more generally, in all situations in which a so-called object “buffer” has to be employed to absorb any temporary discrepancies between the flow rate of the arriving or incoming articles and the flow rate of the outgoing articles.
These discrepancies may derive (as they do in the example to which extensive reference will be made hereinafter) from the fact that the device receives as its input a practically continuous flow of articles, while the output therefrom operates on an on-off basis and therefore only in distinct intervals, for example when it discharges at a predetermined rhythm groups of articles that are arranged together with a view to some subsequent processing operation (for example, in a packaging station, possible after appropriate compaction).
In the solutions known to the state of the art, including the one described in the previously cited document, the length of the tract of the conveyor that forms the buffer (and in practice therefore also the number of articles that can be contained in the buffer) is made to vary by realizing an overall translation of the conveyor structure. The effect thereby obtained is that of varying the length of the active branch of the conveyor comprised between the loading station and the discharge station, these two stations being maintained in fixed positions. The principal critical aspects of the functioning of these known devices are essentially bound up with the objective difficulty of ensuring an exact phasing (cadencing) of the functioning of the device, this especially in relation to the incoming flow of articles and the need for moving the entire structure of the conveyor, with all the intrinsic problems of inertia and wear and tear necessarily associated with this action. These intrinsic limitations become more and more evident as the speed at which the device is expected to operate becomes greater. Another drawback associated with the solutions known to the state of the art derives from the difficulty that is experienced when so-called “format changes” have to be made, that is to say, when the device has to be adapted for processing different articles and/or realizing different assortment functions.
In a more specific manner the present invention relates to a device in accordance with the preamble of Claim
1
hereinbelow, known—for example—from EP-A-0 501 382. Though coming to grips to a certain extent with some of the problems that have just been outlined, the said known device is intrinsically unsuitable for operating at high speeds and/or in situations in which each of the articles that are being handled is itself made up of a plurality of products. As regards the reference to high operating speeds and referring to the application example extensively described hereinafter (which is not, however, to be considered as in any way limiting the range of the invention), a device in accordance with the present invention can be used as a grouper intended to receive an input flow of, say, 1200-1500 units per minute of such articles as ladies' sanitary towels that have to be grouped and compacted into piles that are to be sent, for example, to a packaging machine, with each pile containing ten articles, so that the output flow rate will be 120-150 piles per minute.
The present invention seeks to eliminate the aforesaid drawbacks by eliminating the need for keeping the principal machine in phase with the grouping device and, at one and the same time, making it possible to obtain the previously mentioned high operating speeds without this having any negative effects on the life and reliability of the mechanical components of the device.
According to the present invention, this scope can be attained thanks to a device having the characteristics that will subsequently be described.
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Ellis Christopher P.
Fameccania.Data S.p.A.
Roylance Abrams Berdo & Goodman LLP
Sharma Rashmi
LandOfFree
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