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US 11,383,865 B2Granted
Food conveyor and packaging systems and methods
AssigneeIntercontinental Great Brands LLC
InventorsRicardo Bacellar, Joao Moreira
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A conveyor and packaging system includes an upstream conveyor that transports stacks biscuits in a plurality of lanes into buckets of a bucket conveyor. The bucket conveyor transports the buckets in a direction perpendicular to the length of the buckets to a packaging area, where transfer devices transfer the biscuit stacks to an input of a packaging machine. The transfer device can transfer the stacks without use of an intermediary conveyor.
Claims8
A method of packaging food products comprising:
- forming an array of individual stacks of food products;
- advancing the array of individual stacks of food products in a downstream direction to a bucket conveyor with an array of buckets shaped to hold stacks of the food products;
- identifying, via a control module, one of the individual stacks of food products for transfer from the bucket conveyor to one of a plurality of packaging machines;
- providing a plurality of transfer devices each associated with at least one of the plurality of packaging machines;
- lifting, from the buckets of the bucket conveyor, via one of the transfer devices controlled and selectively activated by the control module, the one of the individual stacks of food products identified by the control module from the array;
- transferring from the array the identified one of the individual stacks of food products lifted from the buckets of the bucket conveyor by the transfer device selected by the control module to the one of a plurality of packaging machines;
- and
- packaging, via the one of the plurality of the packaging machines, at least part of the identified one of the individual stacks of food products transferred from the buckets of the bucket conveyor by the transfer device.
5 more elements
A method of packaging food products comprising:
- sequentially forming an array of individual stacks of the food products on a bucket conveyor having an array of buckets shaped to hold stacks of the food products;
- identifying, via a control module, one of the individual stacks of the food products on the bucket conveyor for removing from the array on the bucket conveyor;
- elevating, from the buckets of the bucket conveyor, via a transfer device controlled and selectively activated by the control module, the one of the individual stacks of the food products identified by the control module for removal from the array on the bucket conveyor;
- sequentially depositing a plurality of the food products from the one of the individual stacks of food products lifted from the array on the bucket conveyor via the transfer device selected by the control module onto a wrapper;
- and
- enclosing the plurality of food products sequentially elevated from the buckets of the bucket conveyor and deposited by the transfer device selectively activated by the control module onto the wrapper within the wrapper.
3 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.