Doran Brothers Inc.

Cannon Equipment Company

Edward R Butterly, Jr

Doyle E Stoppel

Richard P Donovan

Kai E Hansen

The present invention concerns a caser for quickly organizing variously sized containers into a plurality of predetermined patterns and then simultaneously filling an equal plurality of individual cases with that predetermined number of products. The caser of the present invention includes two parallel in-feed conveyors each delivering a single file continuous stream of containers to a loading area. Clamp and sensor means provide for regulating a predetermined number of containers into a pattern forming area from each conveyor. After a pattern is formed by an alternating pusher means that provides for pushing the group of containers either right or left to a position over one of two loading areas. Each loading area includes trap door means and a gripper head assembly. Each gripper head assembly includes a plurality of gripper heads each for gripping one of the plurality of patterns of containers. The gripper heads provide for gripping the containers and lowering them into cases after the trap door means open. The cases are delivered by third and fourth conveyors to positions directly below each of the trap door means. To account for the width of the sidewalls of each case, the gripper heads are movable horizontally so that each pattern is centered over the interior of its respective case prior to the lowering thereof. Thus, multiple cases can be filled at the same time by a single lowering movement of each gripper head assembly. During a loading process a further plurality of patterns is being formed and moved by the pusher to the other loading area.

Case loader and method of loading

High speed dairy casing methods and apparatus assemble columns of filled containers arriving on two infeed conveyors, transfer one, two or more columns to an assembly ramp adjoining each conveyor, and then sweep the assembled columns from the conveyor and the ramp together across the ramp to an adjacent loading zone for casing, leaving the assembly ramp free for assembling succeeding columns while case loading is proceeding. Preferably two infeed conveyors deliver filled containers into two separate assembly zones with their ramps flanking a central loading zone, and a pusher with two extended positions propels each single column from its conveyor onto the assembly ramp, and then propels the final column with the assembled columns together across the ramp to the loading zone as the pusher advances to its remote extended position. Programming of limit sensors and pusher controls, and re-positioning of adjustable guides and guide-plates adapts the modular casers of this invention to assemble many different sizes of containers, and to load them into one or two cases, utilizing either one or two infeed conveyors.

Dairy casing method and apparatus

A cart loader assembles objects advancing along an infeed conveyor line into arrayed rows of parallel columns, and transfers these arrayed rows of columns to individual shelves of a multi-tiered rolling cart. The cart loader has an external frame enclosing a vertically elongated front elevator and a central staging zone fed by the infeed conveyor. A multi-deck elevator has decks spaced apart vertically by a distance corresponding to the vertical distance between shelves on the multi-tiered cart, latched to the frame for loading. A plurality of horizontally deployable and retractable pushers are each aligned respectively with one shelf, and positioned for delivery of objects from the elevator zone to the cart. A preferred deck-loading and cart-shelf loading sequence achieves minimum loading cycle time coupled with maximum time within each cycle for replacing each loaded cart with an empty cart for the next loading operation.

Growing community of inventors

Brookfield, CT, United States of America

Edward R Butterly, Jr