Machine for stuffing stoned olives automatically with meat paste

A machine for stuffing stoned olives automatically with meat paste, comprising:

• -a serial infeed station;
• -a runout station from which the stuffed olives emerge;
• -a transfer station by which stoned olives are carried singly from the infeed station to the runout station, comprising an intermittently driven conveyor affording at least a plurality of mutually aligned pockets in which the olives dispensed from the serial infeed station are taken up during the pauses of the conveyor, and a longitudinal profiled channel coinciding with the pockets and extending the entire length of the conveyor;
• -a cutting station, lying between the serial infeed station and the runout station and equipped with a knife that occupies a position elevated in relation to the bottom part of the olives carried in the single pockets of the conveyor in such a way as to cut longitudinally through the uppermost part of the olive only;
• -a divaricator, occupying a fixed position in the profiled channel immediately beyond the knife in the direction of the runout station, and serving to spread apart the sides of each previously cut olive in such a way as to create a discernible void;
• -an injector device, supplied with meat paste from a feeder station and activated during each pause of the conveyor to force a quantity of meat paste from the outlet section of a relative nozzle into the void opened by the divaricator;
• -actuator means by which the various movements of the serial infeed station, the transfer station, the injector device and the meat paste feeder station are brought about and synchronized one with another.