Machine for packing stacks of disc-shaped articles inside rigid cylindrical containers

A machine for packing stacks of disc-shaped articles in rigid cylindrical containers, wherein the machine comprises:

• a line which supplies empty cylindrical containers to an inlet station containing organs which release the empty containers, arranged with axes vertical and with mouths facing upwards, to corresponding gripping organs provided on a multiple conveyor;
• a filling station, provided downstream of the inlet station, which contains a plurality of supply units which release a predetermined quantity of stacked disc-shaped articles into a plurality of cylindrical containers in a paused state, which plurality of cylindrical containers are borne by the multiple conveyor;
• a closing station, located downstream of the filling station, containing means which pick up caps coming from a supply line and insert the caps into the mouths of the filled containers borne by the multiple conveyor, thus closing the containers;
• an outlet station, provided downstream of the closing station, containing second organs which pick up paused individual closed containers borne by the multiple conveyor and release the containers to transporter organs;
• and further wherein the multiple conveyor comprises:
• at least an upper transporter and a lower transporter, which extend one above the other along a same ring-wound trajectory, to each of which at least two batteries of gripping organs are associated, at a same distance from one another, the at least two batteries associated to the upper transporter being intercalated with the corresponding at least two batteries associated to the lower transporter defining a number of empty places between the at least two consecutive batteries of the upper transporter and of the lower transporter, which number of empty places is dynamically variable from zero to a maximum value;
• motor organs which independently activate the upper transporter and the lower transporter, resulting in an uninterrupted and intermittent presence of gripping organs at the inlet station, and of gripping organs associated to a relative container at the closing station and the outlet station and resulting in keeping the battery situated immediately downstream of the inlet station paused in the filling station, such as to avoid interference between the containers paused in the filling station and the empty containers associated to the gripping organs situated upstream of the filling station, which empty containers are intermittently-activated.