Feeder for flat articles of varying thickness

Abstract

A singulator adapted for feeding articles of varying thickness is comprised of a driver with a movable and resiliently biased retarder, called a dancer. The dancer moves back and forth along the article flow path, in response to the passage through the nip of the articles being singulated, to automatically set the gap at the singulator nip. A dancer body motion may be linear or pivoting. The path of article travel through the singulator nip is at an angle to the downstream article flow path. Thus, when a takeaway device pulls on the article, the dancer moves to open the singulator gap slightly to enable the article to more freely be taken away. A preferred dancer has an endless belt and is spring biased to lightly contact the driver at the nip in the absence of an article; and, periodic reversal of driver direction engages the dancer belt surface at the nip and moves it upstream, thereby exposing a new surface. A takeaway device comprises a friction roller directly driven by a motor, where the combination has a particularly low moment of inertia. Thus, when the roller engages a slow moving article issuing from an upstream device, motor rotational speed of the combination sharply decreases, to avoid damage to the article surfaces.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.