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Feeding articles to successive stations for treatment

  • US 4,502,215 A
  • Filed: 12/20/1982
  • Issued: 03/05/1985
  • Est. Priority Date: 12/20/1982
  • Status: Expired due to Term
First Claim
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1. Apparatus for feeding ones of articles and positioning the same at one or more stations along a path traversed by the articles, comprising;

  • means for guidably advancing the articles in a single file manner to and beyond the stations successively located along the path;

    means for shuttling transversely of the path, a plurality of fingers simultaneously in a cycle from a working state to and from a transitory state with respect to articles in the path;

    a plurality of fingers, each engaged to said shuttling means and extending substantially normally of and into said path in response to said shuttling including;

    an indexing finger for blocking a file of waiting articles and, at a first station in the path and at any successive station desired thereafter, a positioning finger for positioning an article for treatment, all such fingers extending from a first side of and into the path when the shuttling means is in the working state;

    at each respective station, a detaining finger extending from a second side of and into the path when the shuttling means is in the transitory state for blocking a respective article from advancing beyond such station during the shuttling; and

    the detaining finger at the first station being spaced from the indexing finger a distance suitable to cooperatively capture therebetween an article from the waiting file during a shuttling cycle and to release the same to the first positioning finger when the shuttling means is returned to the working state.

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