Cleanable sheet feeder
AssigneeMultifeeder Technologies, Inc.
InventorJonathan Buesing
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A sheet feeder especially designed for use in the food and pharmaceutical industries is constructed in a hygienic manner and with suitable materials to permit rapid and effective cleaning and sanitizing thereof. Flexible, liquid impermeable bellows are mounted to the feeder housings in surrounding relation to the apertures through which the machine's several rotary shafts enter the housings. The bellows support bearing isolators that not only seal the housings from fluid entry, but because the bellows can flex, they also permit shaft spacings to be adjusted to adapt the machine to sheets of differing thicknesses and to set infeed belt tension. The sheet feeder's product input hopper and its discharge conveyor are designed to be easily detachable for cleaning in a dipping mode.
Claims11
In a computer controlled sheet feeder having first and second housings held in parallel, spaced-apart relation by a cross member, each of said housings comprising a back wall with four integrally formed, mutually perpendicular side walls defining an open front with a removable cover for closing the open front, the first housing containing a computer-based motor control circuit and each of the first and second housings containing;
- (i) a first movable bearing block for supporting an end of a motor driven upper discharge drive shaft penetrating through first apertures in each of the back walls of the first and second housings;
- (ii) a second movable bearing block for supporting an end of a stripper roller shaft penetrating through second apertures in each of the back walls of the first and second housings;
- (iii) at least one stationary bearing block enclosing the first and second movable bearing blocks and for respectively supporting an end of a lower discharge drive shaft and an end of an infeed drive roller shaft penetrating through third and fourth apertures in each of the back walls of the first and second housings;
- (iv) a third movable bearing block for supporting an end of an infeed idler roller shaft penetrating through fifth apertures in the back walls of the first and second housings wherein the improvement comprises hygienic belt adjustment members including:
- a) first, second and third pairs of flexible elastomeric bellows, each of the bellows with first and second ends, a first end of one of the first pair of bellows being sealed against:
- the back wall of the first housing and the other of the first pair of bellows being sealed against the back wall of the second housing, each in covering relation to the first apertures, a first end of one of the second pair of bellows sealed against the back wall of the first housing and the first end of the other of the second pair of bellows sealed against the back wall of the second housing, each in covering relation to the second apertures and where the second ends of each of the first, second and third pairs of bellows supports a bearing isolator surrounding a respective one of said infeed idler roller shaft, said stripper roller shaft, said lower discharge drive shaft and said upper discharge drive shaft;
- (v) a plurality of endless belts surrounding the infeed drive roller shaft and the infeed idler roller shaft.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.