Conveyor device for bookbinding machines

Abstract

A conveyer device for bookbinding machines having a number of processing stations and having plate or cleated chains or the like which take over book blocks and convey them intermittently to the processing stations. The plate or cleated chains are driven in a circulating manner and have chain beams that act in opposite directions to one another. The chain beams include longitudinal bearers and longitudinal guides on which strands of the plate or cleated chains are supported. In order to shorten the set-up time, the distance of the chain beams of the plate or cleated chains from one another is varied by a setting drive via setting members for the purpose of adapting to different thicknesses of book blocks. The thickness of a particular book block is automatically determined in the setting-up operation via a measuring arrangement in the intake. The thickness is communicated by a memory programmable control system directly to the setting drive as a reference value for the setting members for varying the distance between the chain beams.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.