Garment unloader/loader with protective tray

Abstract

An unloading and loading apparatus unloads garments from a printing pallet of a printer and loads the garment to a conveyor for post-printing processing. The apparatus has a robot arm that grips a garment from the printing pallet and travels between a pallet unloading position and a selected placement positions on the conveyor, the arm comprising grippers for gripping a garment. The garment is placed at the selected location on the conveyor but in so doing may travel over and touch or drip onto other garments already on the conveyor. Accordingly, a tray travels beneath the gripped garment over garments already in placement positions on the conveyor to provide protection.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.