US 4,288,994 AGranted

Golfball center freezer

AssigneeChemetron Corporation

InventorDavid B. Burgener

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Abstract

A rotary freezer for cooling resilient golfball centers to a uniform, substantially rigid state is provided with a dispenser to permit dispensing of rigid centers in one-at-a-time fashion from a large batch of frozen centers in the freezer at a rate indepenent of the residence time. As the freezer drum rotates, paddles on the inner circumference serve to lift randomly-selected centers from the batch to a predetermined height for gravity loading onto an inclined rack forming a part of the dispenser. Centers on the rack are arranged in a rectilinear series leading to an outlet port where a metering assembly controls dispensing of the centers from the drum in one-at-a-time fashion at a rate determined by the operator. A gravity conveyor exterior of the freezer drum transports each dispensed center from the outlet to a work station where the winding process is to be initiated before the center returns to its resilient state. In preferred forms, the freezer has a pair of dispensers, each with its own conveyor whereby two winding stations may be served. The freezer is designed to use liquid CO.sub.2 as a refrigerant for more efficient operation.

Claims15

Dependent claims

A freezer for cooling normally resilient spherical objects to a substantially rigid state and for selectively delivering the objects in the rigid state to a work station at ambient temperature, said freezer including:

a hollow rotatable drum adapted to receive and continuously tumble a batch of said spherical objects in random order;
drive means for rotating said drum at a preselected speed;
cooling means for maintaining the interior of said drum at a predetermined subfreezing temperature calculated to provide the desired degree of rigidity to the objects within a preselected cool-down time;
a dispenser at one end of said drum, said dispenser comprising rack means within the drum for successively arranging a number of objects from the random batch into an ordered series, and an object metering mechanism for selectively dispensing singular objects from said series through a proximal endwall of the drum;
a conveyor communicating with said metering means for transporting said dispensed objects from said dispenser to said work station, whereby after said preselected cool-down time, objects in a uniform substantially rigid state may be presented one-at-a-time to the work station at a rate independent of the residence time for the objects in the freezer.

2 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.