Material or article handling – Plural – static structures for supporting discrete loads and... – Load-underlying members
Patent
1987-07-31
1990-04-10
Werner, Frank E.
Material or article handling
Plural, static structures for supporting discrete loads and...
Load-underlying members
198562, 193 35A, 4147464, 414278, 414286, 414268, B65G 116
Patent
active
049155660
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
The invention relates to an installation for automatically collecting homogenous crates to comprise orders, combined with collecting single articles by hand.
For automatically collecting orders, consisting of cases, boxes or crates, sometimes inclined gravity roller tracks arranged in adjacent rows are used, see patent application No. NL 84 00320. At the higher feed-in side the crates are supplied over a supply conveyor from a stores room as required and automatically pushed onto the roller track in question by pushers, in such a manner that on each roller track those boxes or crates are arranged in a row containing only one type of article.
As a rule, however, non-automatic storage systems are used, in which the crates are supplied on pallets by fork lift trucks, and then preferably they have to be received all at once by one roller track.
In both the automatic and the non-automatic system the crates coming down the slope are stopped by a stop at the lower end of each gravity roller track.
An order is collected by transferring a number of crates or boxes from the lower ends of the various roller tracks to the order-collecting conveyor running along these ends.
In the more automated systems, each roller track is often provided with a transfer mechanism at its downward end. The transfer can either be established by mechanically removing the stop temporarily or by lifting the crate abutting the stop over the stop, in both cases with the result that the crate or box rolls on and ends up on the order collecting-conveyor.
Also known are transfer means, being movable along the downward end which transfer one or more crates from one particular roller track onto the collecting conveyor and then pass on to the next destined roller track for the transfer of more crates.
In automatic installations, a computer orders and checks from which roller track how many crates have to be transferred for a certain order, on the basis of a computer-stored order file.
It often occurs that certain orders have to be supplemented by single articles, which then have to be removed by hand from a box or crate and transferred into another crate. So far, preferably, a similar type of system of adjacent gravity roller tracks was used, which tracks can be also automatically loaded in automatic installations from a supply conveyor provided with one or more pushers, which push the arriving crates from the supply conveyor onto the gravity roller track in question, after which the crates roll on up to the stop at the downward end of the roller track or up to the preceding crate.
The first crate is within easy reach, so that articles can be removed by hand and, in combination with other articles, transferred to one or more crates.
So far the two systems, i.e. the system for automatically collecting complete crates and the systems for collecting single articles by hand, were regarded as two separate systems. So the two systems were each separately supplemented with crates via the pertaining supply conveyors with pushers, either or not computer-controlled and -checked.
In either system the length of the gravity roller tracks has to be preferably such that they can receive more than the number of crates stored on one complete pallet, which implies that the roller tracks have to be of considerable length.
Apart from the fact that these long roller tracks and the dual supply system are expensive, there is the considerable disadvantage, in view of the usual lack of space in the order collection rooms, of occupying nearly twice as much space, whereas the requirements for supplementing the roller tracks are not properly attuned, imposing an extra burden on the supply from the storage room.
The present invention relates to a combined installation, from which both complete crates can be automatically collected and single articles can be collected by hand, requiring, however, only one supply system having one joint supply conveyor with pushers and only one set of inclined supply tracks, yielding a tremendous economy in space and expenses.
This combined ins
REFERENCES:
patent: 2405141 (1946-08-01), Hibbard
patent: 2751781 (1956-06-01), McConnell
patent: 3239054 (1966-03-01), Eliassen
patent: 3610445 (1971-10-01), Kitchen et al.
patent: 3674159 (1972-07-01), Lemelson
patent: 3805974 (1974-04-01), Andersson et al.
Elten Nederland B.V.
Werner Frank E.
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