Conveyors: power-driven – Conveyor system for establishing and moving a group of items – By depositing items successively from one conveyor onto...
Patent
1997-02-24
2000-09-26
Nguyen, Tuan N.
Conveyors: power-driven
Conveyor system for establishing and moving a group of items
By depositing items successively from one conveyor onto...
198448, 1988037, 901 9, B65G 4726
Patent
active
061231851
ABSTRACT:
A needle sorting device including an infeed device which first singulates a bulk supply of surgical needles into single file with an intermittently driven vibratory feed bowl assembly, and then individually separates and deposits the needles on a first conveyor for transmission to a processing station with a linear slide discharge mechanism. The first conveyor is translucent and during transit, one or more cameras obtain an image of the individual deposited needles. The image is digitized and the digital signals are transmitted to a control system computer which evaluates the position and orientation for needles and processes the information to obtain data for communication to one or more robot assemblies having grippers. Utilizing the position and orientation data, the robot assembly grippers removes selected needles from the first conveyor and transfers each needle to an engagement device located upon a second precision conveyor. This second precision conveyor is provided with additional devices to further orient the needle transferred thereto. A moveable hard stop is provided at the end of the precision conveyor to provide precise positioning of the needle to an accuracy of 0.001 inch at needle hand-off. Each oriented and precisely positioned needle is conveyed by the second conveyor to an automatic swaging station where sutures are automatically attached.
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Blanch John F.
Demarest David D.
Folch Andres
Lenihan Timothy
Smith William F.
Ethicon Inc.
Nguyen Tuan N.
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