Apparatus for removing yarn bobbins and depositing them on a peg trolley

Abstract

The invention relates to a method and apparatus for removing conical yarn bobbins, particularly in relation to withdrawing them from a conveyor belt which receives and moves said conical bobbins after they have been doffed and discharged from the units of a bobbin producing textile machine, and depositing them in an ordered arrangement on a peg trolley. The apparatus comprises essentially: a shelf-like collection station on which there is fixed at least one sufficiently inclined cradle-shaped roller track for laterally guiding the full bobbins leaving the conveyor belt; a portal manipulator unit with a pendant arm provided with a pin-type gripper which penetrates and withdraws several bobbins one behind the other to transfer them from their prepared-for-withdrawal position to their ordered deposition position by means of vertical and horizontal translational movements and rotational movements generated and coordinated by drive sources which are activated and controlled, moment by moment, by a control unit; a control unit based on a miniprocessor into which an operating program and a set of operating data for computerized positioning are fed. Said control unit also comprises a computing center which determines and memorizes the number of bobbins to be deposited in an ordered arrangement on the pegs of the creel trolley, progressively compares the deposited number of bobbins with the memorized number, and generates a luminous and/or acoustic end-of-cycle signal when the number of bobbins deposited equals the number memorized.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.