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AssigneeBayer Aktiengesellschaft
InventorsBingham Hood van Dyke, Jr., John Louis Barra, Thomas James Hatcher, Michael John Campanelli
Estimating the term…
The conveyor system for clinical test apparatus includes a main transport conveyor and a plurality of auxiliary conveyors located alongside the main transport conveyor. The auxiliary conveyors define straight line paths of travel parallel to the straight line paths of travel of the main conveyor. Each of the auxiliary conveyors is operated by drive means separate from the main transport conveyor. Two crossover points are provided between the main transport conveyor and the auxiliary conveyor. One crossover point is an entrance from the main transport conveyor to the auxiliary conveyor and the other crossover point is an exit from the auxiliary conveyor to the main transport conveyor. Each crossover point is controlled by a gate. One of the gates is a divert gate which can be actuated to block the main transport path thereby diverting puck traffic onto the auxiliary conveyor. The other gate is an interface gate which is used primarily to read information on a sample tube before it is introduced into a test apparatus and also functions as a load and unload station for the clinical test apparatus. The conveyor system also has a main unload and load system wherein tubes that have been completely tested are removed from pucks and reloaded with new tubes that are to be tested.
A conveyor system for clinical test apparatus comprising,
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.
From the US filing history. Foreign family members aren’t listed.
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Using a plurality of sample containers moved by a conveyor system past one or more treatment or analysis stations: details of the conveyor system
General conveyor features: switching points
Investigating or analysing materials by determining their chemical or physical properties
Term ended 14 Nov 2017 (estimated)
USPTO file history isn’t available for this patent, so only indexed dates are shown.
This invention relates to conveyor devices for transporting biological material in containers to clinical test apparatus and more particularly to a conveyor system with a main transport lane for all containers to be tested and individual sidebar lanes associated with different clinical test apparatus, and traffic control gates at each sidebar lane for diverting separate groups of containers to their corresponding clinical test apparatus. The invention further relates to a system for supporting utility installations for the conveyor and its associated traffic control gates.
The term “clinical testing” is intended to refer to hematological tests, tests relating to immunoassay, toxicology, urinalysis and any other specific category of testing performed on biological or body material such as blood, serum, and urine for example. The clinical testing of blood, serum, urine or other body fluid provides invaluable information relative to the health status of an individual and clinical test results are commonly used for diagnostic evaluation, surgical decision making and the recognition of when a change or changes have occurred in a patient's health status.
Clinical testing often involves esoteric and costly procedures that must produce quality information with a high degree of accuracy. As new clinical tests are conceived and conventional clinical tests are improved, the expanding pool of information that is obtainable from various clinical tests must be weighed against the cost of obtaining such information. By reducing the cost of clinical tests, such tests can have the widest possible availability to those individuals who would benefit most from the tests.
In the drawings,
FIG. 1 is a simplified schematic plan view of a conveyor system incorporating the present invention;
FIG. 2 is an enlarged simplified schematic plan view thereof with a reduced number of auxiliary conveyors;
A conveyor system for clinical test apparatus incorporating one embodiment of the invention is generally indicated by the reference number 10.
Referring to FIG. 1 the conveyor system 10 includes a main transport conveyor 12 defining a closed circuit travel path in a generally horizontal plane. The closed circuit travel path permits objects that remain on the conveyor 12 to repeat the path of travel when the conveyor 12 is moving in one direction. The closed circuit travel path includes two straight line paths 16 and 18 and two curved paths 22 and 24 at respective opposite ends of the straight line paths 16 and 18.
An auxiliary conveyor 30, which has a straight line travel path, is positioned alongside and parallel to the straight line travel path 16 of the main transport conveyor 12. The straight line travel path of the auxiliary conveyor 30 permits objects on the conveyor 30 to move from one point to another without retracing any point of travel when the conveyor 30 is moving in one direction.