Pitting knife drive assembly with box cam and cherry pitting apparatus including same

Abstract

A pitting knife drive assembly for mounting in a fruit pitting apparatus to drive pitting knives of the pitting apparatus. The pitting knife assembly includes a box cam, a drive assembly for rotating the box cam, a pivot unit which undergoes reciprocating pivoting motion in response to the rotating box cam, and a set of one or more shafts which reciprocate longitudinally in response to the reciprocating pivoting motion of the pivot unit. Preferably also, the pitting knife assembly includes a subassembly for causing the shafts to undergo reciprocating motion in directions perpendicular to their longitudinal axes. A preferred implementation of this subassembly includes a carriage driven by a rotating eccentric, where the eccentric and the box cam are mounted along a common drive shaft, and the drive assembly includes a motor for rotating the drive shaft. In other embodiments, the invention is an apparatus for pitting cherries which includes a pitting knife drive assembly having a box cam and pivot unit of the type described, a set of pitting knives attached to the drive assembly, and a conveyor subassembly for translating the fruit past the pitting knife assembly.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.