Conveyor device for conveying food products
AssigneeProvisur Technologies, Inc.
InventorJürgen Bialy
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A conveyor device for conveying food products on a plurality of parallel conveyor tracks and for formatting the food products in a specific product format, especially for conveying and formatting stacks or interleaved units made of a plurality of slices of cheese or meat products is provided. The conveyor device fills a product gap on one of the conveyor tracks incoming on the input side with a food product so that on the output side all parallel conveyor tracks are supplied with the food products when a product gap is sensed. A corresponding method is also provided.
Claims11
A conveyor device configured to convey food products and to format the food products in stacks or shingles of a plurality of slices of cheese or meat products, comprising:
- a plurality of parallel, individual first conveying tracks;
- a plurality of product sensors, wherein respective product sensors are configured to detect a supply of food product on each first conveyor track;
- a distributor conveyor downstream of the first conveying tracks;
- a shuttle conveyor downstream of the distributor conveyor;
- a buffer conveyor downstream of the first conveying tracks;
- a main flow conveyor configured to convey a main flow of the food products and is selectively loaded with the food products from the distributor conveyor or from the buffer conveyor, the main flow conveyor being downstream of the distributor conveyor, wherein the shuttle conveyor is downstream of the main flow conveyor;
- a plurality of parallel, individual second conveying tracks downstream of the shuttle conveyor and the buffer conveyor,
- wherein at least one of the shuttle conveyor and the buffer conveyor fill product gaps in one of the second conveying tracks when a product gap is detected by one of the products sensors.
A conveyor device configured to convey food products and to format the food products in stacks or shingles of a plurality of slices of cheese or meat products, comprising:
- a plurality of parallel, individual conveying tracks;
- a plurality of product sensors, wherein respective product sensors are configured to detect a supply of food product on each conveyor track;
- a shuttle conveyor, which as a whole is displaceable transversely to a conveying direction of the conveying tracks, wherein when an even number of product gaps in one of the conveying tracks is detected, the shuttle conveyor fills the product gaps with a corresponding number of food products from another conveyor track by transferring at least one of the food products from the conveyor track without product gaps into the conveyor track with the product gaps;
- and
- a product buffer, wherein when an odd number of product gaps in one of the conveying tracks is detected, the product gaps are also filled with food products by transferring at least one of the food products from the product buffer into the conveying track with the product gap.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.