Package making – Group forming of contents unit and subsequent or further... – Long slender articles
Patent
1980-02-21
1982-05-25
Sipos, John
Package making
Group forming of contents unit and subsequent or further...
Long slender articles
53234, 53575, B65B 1904, B65B 1924
Patent
active
043309763
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
This invention relates to machines for packing rod-like articles such as cigarettes and more particularly, although not necessarily exclusively, to machines for packing such articles in the type of packet known in the cigarette trade as a "soft pack". This type of packet most commonly consists of a plain rectangular blank of metallic foil folded around a group of cigarettes in the form of a tube of generally rectangular section, with both ends closed by tucking and folding, and with a somewhat shorter printed paper blank similarly folded outside the foil to cover all but one end of said foil. The folded foil at the exposed end is secured by a superposed securing strip of paper (often constituting a revenue stamp), overlaps elsewhere being secured by adhesive, and usually an overwrap of transparent material is applied to enclose the whole pack.
Packing machines for producing such soft packs commonly include a plurality of hollow rectangular-section mandrels each adapted to receive internally a group of cigarettes. Foil and paper blanks are successively applied to and folded around each mandrel to form a packet with a closed bottom and open top, the packet then being separated from the mandrel by pushing a group of cigarettes out of the mandrel so that the cigarettes engage the closed bottom of the packet as they are leaving the mandrel; the packet thus leaves the mandrel with the cigarettes inside it and thereafter the top of the packet is closed by tucking and folding, the closure strip is applied and any desired overwrap is applied. It is a common practice to compress the group of cigarettes prior to their insertion into the mandrel; then as the cigarettes and packet leave the mandrel the cigarettes expand slightly to fit the packet.
Such machines are now required to operate at quite high output rates, in excess of 200 packets per minute. Some parts of such machines can readily be operated at the speeds necessary for such output rates, but other parts (in general those in which articles are fed by gravity and/or reciprocating elements presenting inertia problems) are difficult to operate.
According to the invention, we provide a packing machine for rod-like articles such as cigarettes, comprising:
a hopper for assembling articles into groups, each containing a desired number of articles;
a rotatable member carrying a plurality of hollow mandrels at regularly spaced positions around its circumference;
means for supplying packet blanks to each of said mandrels in succession and folding said blanks around said mandrels to form open-ended packets;
an endless conveyor having a plurality of spaced tubular pockets for transporting groups of articles from the hopper towards the rotatable member;
and transfer means for receiving groups two at a time successively from the pockets of the conveyor and inserting said groups two at a time successively into the mandrels, comprising at least one rotatable drum having a plurality of regularly-spaced chambers for carrying said groups;
said hopper, said rotatable member, said conveyor and said transfer means all being arranged to operate intermittently, so that
said rotatable member at regular intervals moves through an angle equal to the angular spacing between the centres of adjacent mandrels;
said conveyor advances by a distance equal to the spacing between the axes of one pocket and the axis of the next-but-one pocket at every second movement of said rotatable member;
said hopper delivers two groups of articles to respective pockets of the conveyor during each stoppage of said conveyor; and
each said drum of the transfer means moves through an angle equal to twice the angular spacing between the centres of adjacent chambers for every two movements of said rotatable member.
In such a machine, the hopper and the conveyor are required to operate at one-half of the speed (more accurately, the frequency) of the other elements, for any given output rate. Thus a high output rate is attainable, in spite of the facts that in the hopper, cigarettes are gravity-fed and that the co
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Blackall Victor G.
Daisley Robert T.
Molins Limited
Sipos John
Smith, Jr. John C.
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