Apparatus for transporting paper stacks or the like

Apparatus for stepwise transport of several files of discrete commodities in a predetermined direction and along a predetermined path, particularly for transporting stacks of paper sheets or the like, comprising a housing;

• a battery of neighboring transporting units each including a self-sustaining frame mounted in said housing, more than two endless parallel conveyors each having at least one projection arranged to extend into and from said path in response to movement of the respective conveyor in said direction, said conveyors including a first group having at least one conveyor whose projection is located ahead of and a second group having at least one conveyor whose projection is located behind a commodity in said path, first and second rotary elements for each of said conveyors and each conveyor being trained over the respective rotary elements, and first and second shaft means mounted in the frame and rotatably supporting the first and second rotary elements;
• and common drive means for said conveyors including first and second gear means for respectively rotating the rotary elements for said first and second groups of conveyors, first and second driver gears respectively meshing with the first and second gear means of said units, and means for intermittently rotating said driver gears including a third shaft arranged to drive said fist gear means via said first driver gear, a fourth shaft arranged to drive said second gear means via said second driver gear, stepping motor means arranged to intermittently rotate said third and fourth shafts, and transmission means interposed between said motor means and said third and fourth shafts, said transmission means including means for intermittently changing the angular position of one of said third and fourth shafts with reference to the other of said third and fourth shafts to thereby change the spacing between the projection of each conveyor in one of said groups and the projection of each conveyor in the other of said groups so that the projections of the conveyors of said groups are spread apart or moved nearer to each other to thus permit delivery of commodities into and predictable transport of commodities along said path, the axes of said rotary elements, said gear means and said driver gears being normal to said direction and the entire frame of at least one of said units being adjustable with reference to said housing in parallelism with said axes, the axial length of said driver gears being such that the first and second gear means of said one unit remain in mesh with the corresponding driver gears in all positions of adjustment of the frame of said one unit.