Conveyors: power-driven – Conveyor section – Endless conveyor
Patent
1995-09-18
1996-12-17
Bidwell, James R.
Conveyors: power-driven
Conveyor section
Endless conveyor
193 35TE, 193 35F, B65G 2114
Patent
active
055843760
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a parcels conveyor for transporting general cargo, such as parcels, boxes, luggage, and of the kind having a number of rollers forming a supporting surface for the cargo to be transported.
The manual handling of general cargo, such as parcels, boxes, luggage, at the delivery end of a parcels conveyor is known to be a difficult, demanding job which has been shown to lead to frequent occupational injuries among personnel.
The problem is particularly acute in operations such as the loading of luggage into the cargo compartment of an aircraft. Normally, a parcels conveyor is placed outside the door of the cargo compartment, on which the luggage is transported from or to the door. An assistant inside the aircraft must then take each suitcase off the conveyor and ensure that it is placed correctly in the compartment, without any kind of mechanical assistance in the compartment itself. As the cargo compartment has a rather limited floor-to-ceiling height, the assistant wil often have to work in an awkward position or even a crouching position. Obviously, this work overloads the assistant's back and demands furthermore strong arms. For this reason, the luggage cannot always be treated with the necessary care and this difficult job very often takes a relatively long time to perform.
As the health authorities are now increasingly examining the causes of workplace injuries which could possibly be declared occupational injuries, a solution to the problem must therefore be found.
2. Discussion of the Related Technology
A parcels conveyor is known from U.S. Pat. No. 2,494,302. The conveyor known from the said U.S. Patent belongs indeed to the normal category of conveyors with cargo supporting rollers on the top side, and, especially on vertically adjustable legs, transport rollers on the underside. This well-known conveyor was primarily developed to create a type of in-between conveyor linked to one or two normal rectilinear and/or curved conveyors and in this situation to create a "shape-fixed" junction between these conveyors, for which reason each unit in this conveyor is indeed linked by means of pivots, but also has steady connecting links from one under to the other, in order to achieve a shape-fixed junction.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The invention provides guidelines for such a solution and in that respect a conveyor of the kind mentioned in the introduction according to the invention is characterized in that each unit essentially consists of a supporting rail extending along the width of the conveyor, that the supporting rail of each unit carries a shaft parallel to the rail for said cargo supporting rollers, that said conveyor supporting rollers are journalled on shafts located underneath each supporting rail in close proximity of said rail and parallel with said rail, that the roller/shaft units of the conveyor essentially at the centre line of the conveyor are linked together by means of a longitudinally rigid, flexible means, fastened to the underside of the supporting rail of each unit, and keeping these units linked together at even intervals, and which together with the rail supporting rollers rest upon the base and supports the roller/shaft units of the conveyor.
The invention was made in consideration of the fact that there is a strong need for a conveyor which could easily, and without any particularly large assistance or manual effort, "curve", i.e. be shaped so as to bring luggage from the door of the cargo compartment all the way to the end of the cargo compartment, that the existing so-called flexitracks, consisting of an upper layer of cargo supporting rollers on shafts, linked at the ends with a deformable scissor mechanism of mutually articulated rods, were not very appropriate, even though they could be constructed with lower supporting rollers, able to run on the floor, particularly because these flexitracks lack vertical stability, especially in a curve and that in addition there was a need for a conveyor of ve
REFERENCES:
patent: 1906288 (1933-05-01), Twomley
patent: 2494302 (1950-01-01), Mason
patent: 3170553 (1965-02-01), McElroy
patent: 4164338 (1979-08-01), Myron
patent: 5040655 (1991-08-01), Lacagnina
patent: 5096050 (1992-03-01), Hodlewsky
Bidwell James R.
PV System ApS
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