Device for stacking sheet material
AssigneeHoechst Aktiengesellschaft
InventorsGerhard Limbach, Wilfried Sonntag
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A device for stacking sheet material in the form of individual stacks comprises a fixed stop, a vertically movable stop, a support surface, a sensor and a guide member, to which two pushers are fastened, which are activated by lifting cylinders. The sheet material to be stacked is conveyed by conveying rollers and falls down freely between one of the stops and a stop face where the individual stacks are formed. The guide member can be raised and lowered about a pivot by means of a lifting cylinder which engages a pivot point provided at the underside of the guide member. Stacking is performed in individual stacks, whereby two super-imposed individual stacks each are mutually offset in the direction of transport Z by a distance of displacement x.
Claims14
A device for stacking sheet material so as to form individual stacks each having a preselected number of sheets, where the number of sheets successively delivered and conveyed onto the respective individual stack by means of conveying rollers is kept constant for each stack and the individual stacks are piled up to form a full stack, comprising:
- a base having an upper support surface;
- a fixed stop and a vertically movable stop adjacent thereto at a head end of the base and a stop face at a rear end of the base;
- the fixed stop and the stop face being separated by a distance y corresponding to the length of the sheet material to be stacked plus a distance x corresponding to the distance by which two super-imposed individual stacks are mutually staggered in the direction of transport Z;
- and
- pusher means which can be displaced vertically for selectively holding and horizontally shifting an individual stack until the stack rests against the fixed stop.
A method of stacking sheet material so as to form individual stacks with a stacking device having a movable stop, a guide member and a first pusher having a protrusion on an underside thereof, comprising the steps of:
- forming a first stack to a predetermined stack height, and resting the movable stop on a support surface upon which said first stack is formed during said forming of said first stack;
- when the first stack has reached said predetermined height, lowering the guide member to an inclined position;
- extending the first pusher so that the protrusion on an underside thereof rests upon the first stack and holds the first stack in place;
- forming a second stack to said predetermined stack height so that a first end of the second stack is maintained in a raised position relative to the first stack;
- and
- moving the second stack by pushing the raised end thereof in a horizontal direction relative to the first stack for offsetting the second stack from the first stack by a predetermined distance.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.