Wood aligning and orienting conveyor

Details Wood aligning and orienting conveyor Wood aligning and orienting conveyor

2000-02-28

2001-06-05

Bidwell, James R. (Department: 3651)

Conveyors: power-driven

Conveyor for changing attitude of item relative to conveyed...

By conveying randomly faced items and turning items to...

Reexamination Certificate

active

06241073

ABSTRACT:

FIELD OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates to a material handling and processing conveyor and, more particularly, to a wood aligning and orienting conveyor for converting a random pile of loose and tangled wood debris into an aligned and organized stream of wood pieces.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Wood residue comes from different sources ranging from natural debris on the forest floor to man-made residues from activities such as forest management (thinning and pruning), harvesting, transporting, dry land sorting and sawmill processing of lumber. In particular, the wood residue generated by forest harvesting, transporting the trees to mills, and sorting is mainly formed of split, broken and rejected logs, tree tops, limbs and branches. Wood residue generated by sawmill processing is generally in the form of slabs, edgings and trimmings. All of the above wood residues are characterized by pieces with highly irregular shapes and variable dimensions. Wood residues tend to be collected into loose piles of jumbled and tangled pieces that are difficult to handle and sort as will be described below.
Traditionally, the portion of the wood residues classified as “good, clean fiber” is chipped and sold for pulp. While wood residue from forest management activities is processed by mobile equipment, the rest is handled by dedicated fixed machinery such as chippers and hogs. Due to problems with the handling, sorting and processing of wood residues, the remainder of the wood residues are burned for fuel or dumped to landfill. However, increasing public pressure due to environmental concerns has resulted in federal and local regulators attempting to discourage the waste of wood residues by taking steps to issue fewer burning permits, enacting tighter air quality control and emission requirements and restricting land usage. These steps have prompted the forest industry to take another look at wood residues, which are becoming more and more of a liability, with a view to converting the residues more completely to a source of fiber.
A major step toward the efficient conversion of more wood residues to usable material such as wood flakes or other value added wood fibers is the development of appropriate machinery for effective sorting and handling of the irregularly shaped and dimensioned wood residue. By processing wood residues, additional value is extracted from what was formerly wood waste which will improve a mill's recovery factor and directly influence its profitability.
In the past, various handling and sorting systems have been developed to handle non-uniform materials.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,753,976 to Fitzmaurice discloses an aligning conveyor which relies on a series of conveyor rollers rotating at successively faster speeds to align articles on the conveyor.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,440,287 to Lund et al. discloses an aligning apparatus for wood flakes.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,826,388 to Bielagus discloses an apparatus for sorting material by length that relies on articles of a defined length passing through gaps between adjacent conveyor rollers.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,363,950 to Lacuna et al. discloses a lumber organizer having drums that are rotated at a greater speed than the infeed conveyor to align the lumber.
The following patents disclose further examples of material handling equipment:
U.S. Pat. No. 4,494,919 to Knudson et al.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,666,029 to Bürkner
U.S. Pat. No. 5,325,954 to Crittenden et al.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,404,990 to Barnes et al.
None of the apparatus and techniques disclosed in the foregoing references is particularly well suited to sorting materials such as wood residues formed from a random collection of tangled and jumbled irregular, elongate pieces.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
In view of the foregoing discussion, there is a need for a wood orienting and aligning system that is capable of organizing wood residues from a variety of sources such as the forest, wood rooms and sawmills to permit further efficient processing to produce usable, quality wood fiber.
The present invention provides a wood aligning and orienting conveyor that addresses the above objects. Accordingly, the present invention provides apparatus for aligning and orienting generally elongate objects of irregular shape and variable dimensions comprising:
a plurality of spaced, rollers to transport the objects in a direction of transport from an inlet zone through a sorting zone to an outlet zone by rotation of the rollers;
a plurality of aligning walls extending over the rollers parallel to the direction of transport from the outlet zone toward the inlet zone; and
eccentric vanes mounted to some of the plurality of rollers to rotate with said rollers to be movable through the objects on the rollers;
whereby objects introduced into the inlet zone in a generally random, entangled collection are aligned and oriented in the direction of transport into generally, parallel, stacked relationship at the outlet zone by movement through the sorting zone over the rollers between the aligning walls subject to the action of the eccentric vanes.
The wood aligning and orienting conveyor of the present invention will convert a random pile of loose and tangled wood debris into an aligned and organized stream of wood pieces ready for subsequent fiber processing operations.


REFERENCES:
patent: 2753976 (1956-07-01), Fitzmaurice
patent: 3184035 (1965-05-01), Wiley
patent: 4440287 (1984-04-01), Lund et al.
patent: 4494919 (1985-01-01), Knudson et al.
patent: 4666029 (1987-05-01), Burkner
patent: 4826388 (1989-05-01), Golding
patent: 5325954 (1994-07-01), Crittenden et al.
patent: 5363950 (1994-11-01), Lacuna et al.
patent: 5404990 (1995-04-01), Barnes et al.
patent: 5871080 (1999-02-01), Manzi et al.

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