Pairing and stacking system for molded articles

Abstract

A conveyor mechanism including two belts carries two types of interfitting molded articles such as cups and lids from a molding machine to an assembly station, maintaining a constant orientation between them. The assembly station comprises a pair of synchronized and overlapping star wheels, counterrotated by a Geneva drive, which remove the molded articles from the conveyor belts, bring them into vertical alignment, and come to a momentary stop in this position in which a plunger synchronized with the Geneva motion of the star wheels joins the two parts together and pushes them into an overlying stacker tube, whereupon the star wheels resume their motion. Several stacker tubes, linked by an endless transport chain, are capable of receiving a limited number of pairs of molded articles, their drive mechanism being so coupled with the star-wheel drive as to advance the chain to bring a loaded stacker tube to an unloading station whenever a preceding tube in the array has been filled.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.