Laminated core manufacturing apparatus and laminated core manufacturing method

A laminated core manufacturing method for manufacturing at least a punched out body of a plurality of laminated core materials used for manufacturing a laminated core, the laminated core manufacturing method comprising:

• an overlapping step of overlapping the plurality of laminated core materials conveyed along different conveyance routes;
• an edge aligning step of aligning with an edge aligning unit edge positions in a width direction of the plurality of laminated core materials between the plurality of laminated core materials;
• an uplift prevention step of preventing uplift of the plurality of laminated core materials whose edge positions are aligned in the edge aligning step;
• an edge position correction step of correcting the edge positions in the width direction of the plurality of laminated core materials;
• and
• a punching step of punching out the plurality of laminated core materials which have been overlapped in the overlapping step, and subjected to an edge position alignment process in the edge aligning step, an uplift prevention process in the uplift prevention step, and an edge position correction process in the edge position correction step, so as to obtain the punched out body,
• wherein the edge aligning unit includes:
• a pair of side rollers facing each other in the width direction of the plurality of laminated core materials;
• and
• a spring configured to generate elastic force to bias the pair of side rollers in a facing direction,
• wherein in the edge aligning step, the elastic force of the spring increases or decreases in accordance with a difference between a maximum edge-to-edge distance and a reference interval when the maximum edge-to-edge distance, which is a distance between farthest edges in the width direction of the plurality of laminated core materials, exceeds the reference interval between the pair of side rollers, and
• wherein in the edge aligning step, the pair of side rollers sandwiches the plurality of laminated core materials in the width direction by the elastic force of the spring so as to align the edge positions.