Sheet feeding or delivering – Feeding – Pack holders
Patent
1998-06-08
1999-06-29
Krizek, Janice L.
Sheet feeding or delivering
Feeding
Pack holders
271146, 271152, B65H 108, B65H 126
Patent
active
059156856
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
DESCRIPTION
The invention concerns an arrangement for the automatic loading of material into a mail sorting system, in accordance with the preamble to patent claim 1.
So far, the input of material into mail sorting systems required an involved manual loading. For this, the items are emptied from the postal container onto the feed section or are placed manually in stacks onto the feed section. They are subsequently aligned, also manually, with respect to the letter front edge and lower edge and are pushed toward the pull-off device or the residual mail stack. The separating blade is pivoted in behind the stack and the item pull-off begins. In this case, the conveying belt in connection with the separating blade delivers the stack of letters to the pull-off and separating device, which separates the letters with a uniform spacing.
An arrangement with several separating blades for subdividing into several stacks is described in the EP 0 591 749 A1, wherein each stack contains items of a certain size category, e.g. thickness. The separating means can be adjusted to any size category. An automatic loading is not possible in this case.
The DE 41 17 434 A1 also discloses a solution with several separating blades. However, this relates to the forming of stacks, in particular stacks of envelopes, and their transport to a packaging station, wherein four separating blades are used.
It is the object of the invention, specified in claim 1, to automate the operation of loading material into a mail sorting system, so that manual activities are no longer required.
The dependent claims contain advantageous embodiments and modifications of the invention.
The loading module preferably comprises a receiving mechanism, mounted on a pivoting device, for accepting the mail container. The filled mail containers in this case are emptied with a pivoting movement onto the mail receiving section between the separating blades for the separating blade arrangement.
The mail receiving section preferably comprises a vibrator for aligning the letters.
Owing to the fact that a uniform filling degree for the postal containers cannot always be ensured, the spacing between the 2 separating blades of the separating blade arrangement can be adjusted according to one advantageous feature. Once the mail is emptied from the container, the two separating blades move toward each other until the stack of mail exerts a certain pressure on the separating blades.
It is preferable that a conveyor belt is used to deliver the mail containers to the loading module and also remove them again from the loading module. In order to support the mail transport, the mail conveying track for one preferred embodiment has a conveyor belt between the mail receiving section and the separating device, which moves synchronously with the pivoted-in single separating blade, as well as with the pivoted-in separating blades for the separating blade arrangement, if these guide the stack of mail toward the separating device.
A further feature of the invention provides that the mail conveying track is designed to be stationary, but is made of a material with low friction coefficient.
The invention is explained in more detail in the following with the aid of an exemplary embodiment and by referring to the drawings.
The following is shown here:
FIG. 1 A perspective drawing of the system with the stack of letters on the mail receiving section;
FIG. 2 A perspective drawing of the system shortly before the stack of letters is taken over by the single separating blade.
The postal container 6 filled with mail is transported to the loading module via a conveying belt 2, which is not shown in detail here and serves as a feed section. A receiving mechanism 9, designed as a parallel gripper, centers the postal container 6 in position. The postal container 6 is then pivoted with the aid of a pivoting device 12 by 180 degrees. The mass moment of inertia of the letter stack 7 is utilized to prevent the mail items from falling out of the postal container 6 during the pivoting operation, which
REFERENCES:
patent: 4052052 (1977-10-01), Muller
patent: 5044877 (1991-09-01), Constant et al.
patent: 5150891 (1992-09-01), Svyatsky et al.
patent: 5292114 (1994-03-01), McConnell
patent: 5398931 (1995-03-01), Tohgoh
Bausch Guenther
Mok Josef
Krizek Janice L.
Siemens Aktiengesellschaft
Spencer George H.
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