Processing plant for treating hides, skins, pieces of leather and the like
OwnerKarl-Otto Gewenigerinventor
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
The invention relates to a process of treating workpieces consisting of hides, skins, pieces of leather or the like and is characterized by subjecting the workpiece in conjunction with a drying operation to lateral and longitudinal stretching by way of a stretching operation which comprises extension of an elastic conveyor belt on which the workpiece is conveyed. The invention also relates to machine units which can be assembled to form complete treating plants and each of which is equipped with an elastic conveyor belt for conveyance of the workpiece and with apparatus for providing, by extension and bending of the conveyor belt, a stretching and softening treatment of the workpiece, and preferably also with apparatus for drying or remoistening the workpiece.
Claims1
A processing plant for treating workpieces consisting of hides, skins, pieces of leather or like materials, comprising:
- frame means supporting workpiece treating means and workpiece conveyor means including endless belt means, and guide means for said belt means, wherein said plant comprising an assemblage of a plurality of independent machine units arranged in a cooperative manner, each of which units comprises a frame, an endless belt conveyor having a workpiece receiving end and a workpiece delivering end, guide means for said belt conveyor and at least one workpiece treating means for effecting at least one of a plurality of treating operations, said units including the respective frames, belt conveyors and guide means being of fundamentally the same basic construction, the workpiece receiving end of the belt conveyor of each of said machine units, except the first one in the assemblage thereof, being arranged and positioned to receive workpieces transported to the delivering end of the belt conveyor of each preceding one of said units for moving said workpieces in a continuous path along the assemblage of machine units to be treated successively by their treating means, each of said units being capable of being driven in interaction with the other units at a different speed, said treating means supported by said frames of the machine units being selected and adapted to effect a series of treating operations including operations by which the length of each workpiece is changed, each of said units comprising driving means which are controlled to drive the respective conveyor belt at a speed such that said belt conveyors are adapted to transport said workpieces continuously along said path so that the individual speed of the conveyor of each succeeding unit compensates for any change in the length of workpieces in the preceding unit, the units being arranged and dimensioned so that each conveyor belt comprises an upwardly inclined workpiece transporting run and a downwardly inclined workpiece transporting run, and said belt conveyors of said machine units together form a continuous sinusoidal transporting path of a substantially greater length than the total horizontal length of said assemblage of machine units.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.