A-t-o Inc.

Charles E Venzke

Lloyd L Foster

Gary D Gaarder

A tip-up and mounting apparatus in a sortation conveyor includes a support angle, upstanding mounting angles, mounting brackets, and a tray engaging roller mounted on crank arms pivoted to the mounting brackets. The mounting angles are disposed with their apices facing outwardly of the conveyor, thus providing a mounting surface at 45.degree. to the conveyor's machine direction for the mounting bracket. The crank arms are pivoted to the mounting bracket, and this configuration provides an in and out component of motion to the rollers during their movement to and away from sortation tray engagement, thereby maintaining a short roller dwell time in tray interfering position. Adjustable construction of the components, together with a self-aligning actuating cylinder mounted within the mounting bracket reduces bulk and provides a highly tunable and smoothly operating tip-up apparatus.

Sortation conveyor tip-up and mounting apparatus

An improved circular sorter includes an integral, rotatable, circular ring on which tiltable tray carriages are mounted. The ring is driven by a peripheral drive to convey the tiltable trays past loading stations, where articles are placed thereon, and then to sort locations where articles are selectively discharged by tray tilting, to either the inside or outside of the ring. Both loading and sort locations can be disposed interiorly or exteriorly of the ring. Yieldable rollers support the ring and operatively accommodate variations in vertical disposition, while a combination of fixed and yieldable rollers guide the ring in a horizontal path and accommodate ring pitch inaccuracies.

Circular sortation apparatus and methods

A tilting tray apparatus for use in a sorting conveyor includes a tray carrier and a yieldable spring latch for yieldably holding the carrier in an article carrying position, a bank position, and a discharge position. The latch yieldably resists tray carrier tilting to provide tray control. A tip-up cam surface is provided integrally on the tray carrier for engagement by a tip-up device to tilt the tray carrier to discharge articles thereon.

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New Berlin, WI, United States of America

Charles E Venzke