Fluent material handling – with receiver or receiver coacting mea – Fluent charge impelled or fluid current conveyed into receiver
Patent
1984-05-29
1986-05-06
Bell, Jr., Houston S.
Fluent material handling, with receiver or receiver coacting mea
Fluent charge impelled or fluid current conveyed into receiver
141367, 141368, 141392, 141286, B65B 116
Patent
active
045865493
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
This invention relates to vacuum filling machines for packaging powdered or granular products such as foodstuffs, into containers, and more particularly to an improved filling head for use in such machines.
Vacuum filling machines for the above purpose are known but suffer a number of disadvantages which render them only moderately successful in the food packaging industry. Such known machines generally have a filling head with downwardly opening delivery port which may be in the form of a conical frustum inverted to provide a small outlet at the bottom. Alternatively the delivery port may simply be one or more outlet holes in a plate. The delivery port is fed with product from a hopper arranged above the port and usually connected thereto by a delivery duct of circular cross-section. A container is brought up under the delivery port and when the rim of the container forms a seal against a sealing plate a vacuum is created in the container causing powdered product to be delivered therein under the consequent pressure on the material in the hopper. Removal of the vacuum causes the product to shear across the delivery port thus forming a bridge whereby the escape of product is stopped whilst the filled container is removed and a further empty container is placed in position for filling.
The problems or disadvantages arise mainly because of the accuracy required in packaging containers for sale. Since the products are sold by weight but more conveniently packaged by volume, any variation in density can cause unacceptable variations in the weight of product packaged. Since existing machines do not have a facility to adjust density in the supply hopper it is not possible to achieve a sufficiently high packing density of product in the hopper to provide the consistent accuracy of weight packaged into containers, as is now required in many industries. In an attempt to increase the `pack` density in the container some prior art machines apply the vacuum intermittently but the improvement achieved is marginal. In one form of the prior art the packaged product is weighed after filling and any shortage is made up by a small screw conveyor adapted to add small quantites to the container. Such a method is time consuming and thus slows a production line. Of course if there is a consistent unacceptable variation in weight it is necessary to take adjustments to the filling machine and such adjustments, which traditionally require insertion or removal of spacer washers under the sealing plate or even alteration of the cone angle of the delivery port, are time consuming and hence costly to make. Similar adjustments are usually required each time there is a change in the size of container being filled or a change in the type of product being packaged, for example, a change from powdered milk to powdered coffee. The inconvenience and cost of such adjustments is even more significant in multi-head machines wherein, for example, eight filling heads are arranged on one filling machine. In multi-head machines the task of initially adjusting the heads to provide uniformity as between all the heads is often a very time consuming task.
In addition to the above known filling machines are relatively slow since the filling operation is limited to the rate at which product can be dispensed and the relatively small diameter delivery port which is necessary to create the bridging effect in the product, unduly restricts the product flow.
Accordingly, it is an object of this invention to provide an improved filling head for a vacuum filling machine of the kind used for packaging powdered product, which filling avoids or overcomes any one or more of the aforementioned disadvantages.
Thus one form of the invention provides a filling head for a vacuum filling machine of the kind used to package powdered or granular product into containers and including a hopper for supplying said product to said filling head, characterized in that, said head includes an outlet duct extending downwardly from said hopper to an outlet port, said outlet port surro
REFERENCES:
patent: 1355016 (1920-10-01), Thompson
patent: 1371244 (1921-03-01), Huntley
patent: 1820480 (1931-08-01), O'Neil
patent: 3695315 (1972-10-01), Ayars
Bell, Jr. Houston S.
Kawite Packaging Pty. Ltd.
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