Elongated-member-driving apparatus – With means to convey work or product relative to driving... – Interrelated conveying and driver-actuating means
Reexamination Certificate
2003-05-02
2004-11-09
Gerrity, Stephen F. (Department: 3721)
Elongated-member-driving apparatus
With means to convey work or product relative to driving...
Interrelated conveying and driver-actuating means
C227S007000, C227S040000, C227S099000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06814272
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a nailing machine.
As it is known, for making different articles of manufacture, constituted by wood elements, nailing machines, provided for firmly coupling wood pieces such as battens, blocks or strips, to provide a finished product are conventionally used.
One of the above mentioned articles, usually made on an industrial scale, comprises the so-called shipment and storing pallets, including a plurality of parallel wood battens, so arranged as to form a bearing surface for goods being transported.
The parallel battens bear on cross strips which, in turn, bear on small wood blocks.
Usually, in standardized pallets, said wood blocks are arranged along three geometrical axes, with a mutually parallel relationship.
For making a pallet of the above disclosed configuration, modern nailing lines, as known from the prior art, provide to use a nailing machine which, at a first operating step, nails the constructional elements arranged at a first block or cross member row and which, in a following operating step, clamps the elements arranged at a second block row and then, after a further feeding of the pallet, nails the wood strips of a third block row.
Since, in a prior nailing machine, a nailing operation requires an average operating time of about seconds, it would be apparent that for carrying out, by a prior nailing machine, the above mentioned three nailing steps to provide a standard pallet, about 15 seconds would be required, and, accordingly, the production yield of such a prior nailing machine would approximately correspond to 240 pallets/hour.
Considering that pallet manufacturers require nailing machines with ever-increasing power and speed capabilities, and further considering that for technical reasons the reciprocating times of the nailing gripper supporting ram cannot be further shortened, manufacturers have for quite some time tried to overcome these productive/technological limits however without achieving the desired goals.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Accordingly, the aim of the present invention is to overcome the above mentioned drawbacks of the prior art, by providing a nailing machine adapted to drastically reduce the nailing time for making a pallet or a like article of manufacture, which machine, by a single operating stroke, provides a plurality of parallel nailing rows.
According to one aspect of the invention, the above aim is achieved by a nailing machine comprising nailing grippers supported by a supporting beam which is controllably movable in a vertical plane and includes nail feeding bins for feeding nails to said grippers, characterized in that said machine further comprises a plurality of gripper holding beams movable in a vertical plane, that the central gripper holding beam is supported by a locally fixed supporting construction and that adjoining gripper holding beams are supported by supports which can be operatively positioned with respect to a workpiece to be nailed.
By a nailing machine having the above features, it is possible to precisely arrange the workpiece to be nailed under the nailing grippers mounted on a first beam supported by a supporting construction which is locally fixed with respect to the framework of the nailing machine, whereas the front gripper holding beam construction can be precisely arranged at the block or cross-member row arranged at a front end portion of the pallet, the remaining nailing beam construction being adapted to be arranged at the series of blocks provided at the rear end portion of the pallet.
Owing to the provision of a plurality of simultaneously driven hydraulic cylinders, the nailing gripper supporting beams can be simultaneously driven, thereby allowing to make, for example, a standardized pallet with a single operating stroke of all the gripper holding beams, so as to reduce the nailing time per pallet to about 5 seconds.
REFERENCES:
patent: 3512242 (1970-05-01), Harvis
patent: 3733020 (1973-05-01), Ingram
patent: 4093111 (1978-06-01), Katoh
patent: 4793540 (1988-12-01), Mangan et al.
patent: 4824004 (1989-04-01), Hanson
patent: 5058795 (1991-10-01), Tonus
patent: 6164512 (2000-12-01), Raffoni
Chukwurah Nathaniel
Gerrity Stephen F.
Kirschstein et al.
Stori S.p.A.
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