Apparatus for manipulating block-shaped commodities

US6332530A · kind A · utility

Assignee

• Topack Verpackungstechnik GmbH · DE

Inventors

• Jürgen Grossmann · Bargteheide, DE
• Michael Wachter · Lankau, DE

Key dates

• Filing date: Nov 19, 1999
• Grant date: Dec 25, 2001
• Expiry date: Nov 19, 2019

Classification

• Technology area (CPC B): Performing Operations; Transporting
• CPC primary: B65G47/846
• WIPO field: Handling
• WIPO sector: Mechanical engineering

Abstract

An apparatus for transporting successive at least partially wrapped blocks of cigarettes or the like, e.g., in a packing machine, employs a mobile block supplying member which advances successive blocks of a series of blocks on top of an opening in a bottom wall at a level below a turntable indexible about a vertical axis and carrying several open-bottom receptacles which are movable radially of the axis. An empty receptacle is located above the opening of the bottom wall in response to completion of each indexing step. At such time, a pusher is moved upwardly through the opening of the bottom wall to raise a block into the registering receptacle. In order to avoid movements of blocks relative to the respective receptacles during indexing of the turntable, the freshly filled receptacles are moved radially of the turntable so that the blocks therein at least partially overlie a blocking or confining platform, which is indexible with the turntable, until the receptacles reach a transfer station where the blocks are accepted by a second turntable.