Vibrating article coating and conveying apparatus

A vibrating coating and conveying apparatus for coating articles with a surface coating material and conveying the articles, comprising:

• a base;
• a reservoir disposed above the base for containing the surface coating material and for receiving the articles to be coated;
• a vertically oriented helical conveying flight structure of multiple spiral flights having its bottom end open to the reservoir to receive coated articles from the reservoir through the open bottom end, and for conveying the coated articles generally upwardly out and away from the reservoir to an article discharge at the top end of the flight structure, the spiral flights of the flight structure being all of substantially equal circumferential dimension, the spiral flights having a floor, side walls and open top, and at least a portion of the floor of at least one of the uppermost spiral flights of the multiple spiral flights being of open reticulated construction for the passage of excess coating material downwardly therethrough and into the next lower spiral flight through the open top of the next lower spiral flight to assure complete coating of the articles being conveyed in the helical structure;
• and,
• means for imparting a cyclical generally torsional motion to the reservoir and vertically oriented helical flight structure.