Apparatus for loading packing carriers into a packaging machine
AssigneeInternational Machinery and Guarding Systems Inc.
InventorBernard Claus Liehs
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
For automatic unloading of soft-drink pack carriers form boxes, and depositing same into the carrier-magazine of a packaging machine. The carrier box is loaded into a bucket, from a full-box-conveyor. The bucket is pivotable, and is overturned to enable the box to be extracted from the bucket, leaving the carriers inside. The bucket is pivoted in a cradle, and the cradle is carried in a bucket-elevator, and the bucket can undergo up/down movements on the elevator. Because of the elevator, the box conveyors can be overhead, out of the way of the magazine into which the carriers are to be transferred.
Claims18
Apparatus for unpacking boxes of carriers, which includes:
- a fixed frame, a full-box-conveyor, an empty-box-conveyor, and a magazine;
- wherein the full-box-conveyor holds a quantity of full boxes, the boxes containing respective batches of the carriers;
- a bucket, having front, back, left, right, top, and bottom panels;
- wherein some of the panels of the bucket are open/closable panels;
- wherein the front panel is one of the open/closable panels of the bucket, and the apparatus includes an operable front-motor which, when operated, opens and closes the front panel of the bucket;
- an operable box-motor, which, when operated, drives one of the boxes occupying a senior position on the full-box-conveyor, with its batch of carriers contained therein, off the full-box-conveyor, and into the bucket, through the front panel of the bucket;
- a bucket-cradle, in which the bucket is guided for pivoting movement about a bucket-axis in the bucket-cradle;
- an operable pivot-motor, which, when operated, rotates the bucket about the bucket-axis relative to the bucket-cradle;
- the bucket-cradle includes motion-constraints, which are so structured that the bucket cannot move relative to the bucket-cradle in any mode other than pivoting about the said bucket-axis;
- an operable box-extractor, which, when operated, extracts the box from the bucket, leaving the batch of carriers remaining in the bucket, and deposits the extracted box on the empty-box-conveyor;
- a bucket-elevator, which guides the bucket-cradle for bodily up/down motion of the bucket-cradle, relative to the frame of the apparatus;
- and an operable elevator-motor, which, when operated, drives the bucket-cradle for up/down motion relative to the frame of the apparatus.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.