US 8,074,842 B2Granted

Method and apparatus for a modular dispensing tower

AssigneesLancer Partnership, Ltd., The Coca-Cola Company

InventorsWilliam A. Edwards, Gary V. Paisley, Douglas J. McDougall, Daniel S. Quartarone, Samuel L. Orr, Jr.

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Abstract

A dispenser including a plurality of tower sections allows an operator to remove one or more tower sections from the fluid dispenser without removing the fluid dispenser from a dispensing location. A housing of the dispenser includes multiple arrays of outlets from a housing fluid circuit that is connectable to fluid sources. Separate tower sections including complementary arrays are then coupled to arrays of the housing, thereby extending the housing fluid circuits to the dispense points disposed on the tower sections. The tower sections are secured to the fluid dispenser housing. The tower sections may further include mounting members that mate together to provide additional restraint and to ensure that the dispense points of the attached tower sections are aligned, thereby providing a clean, uniform appearance.

Claims26

Dependent claims

A dispenser, comprising:

a housing including a first housing product circuit and a second housing product circuit;
a first tower section securable to the housing, the first tower section including a first tower product circuit having at least one inlet fluidly connected with the first housing product circuit and at least one outlet extending from the first tower section;
a second tower section securable to the housing, the second tower section including a second tower product circuit having at least one inlet fluidly connected with the second housing product circuit and at least one outlet extending from the second tower section;
a first mounting member secured at a forward face of the first tower section, wherein the first mounting member engages and aligns the at least one outlet from the first tower product circuit;
a second mounting member secured at a forward face of the second tower section, wherein the second mounting member engages and aligns the at least one outlet from the second tower product circuit;
a first dispense point mounted on the first mounting member and fluidly connected with the at least one outlet from first tower product circuit;
a second dispense point mounted on the second mounting member and fluidly connected with the at least one outlet from second tower product circuit;
and
the first mounting member and the second mounting member connect to form an integral mounting member that secures the first tower section with the second tower section, thereby providing alignment of the first dispense point with the second dispense point.

6 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.