Method and apparatus for depalletizing commodities

Abstract

Successive palletized stacks of blanks in a layer of such stacks on a penetrable support of cardboard or the like are lifted off the support by a substantially horizontal plate- or blade-like implement which is caused to penetrate between the upper side of the support and the underside of a selected stack prior to lifting of the selected stack off the support for transfer onto a conveyor or into a blank converting machine, such as a cigarette packing machine. An optical or other suitable monitoring unit has one or more sensors carried by the implement such that they share the movements of the implement to detect, and to effect the generation of defect signals in response to the detection of, improper operation of the apparatus, such as the penetration of the implement through and subsequent lifting of a portion of the support with a selected stack.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.