Conco Inc.

Heico Corporation

Harold S Burt

An article handling system and, more particularly, a box or container picker system having miniaturized components for detecting the presence as well as the orientation of various sizes of boxes and containers in a pallet layer of product including suction cups and associated pneumatically-operated sensing structure arranged in arrays for detecting the presence or absence of a box or container therebeneath during a cycle and controls for determining the coordinates at which box presence is detected and also for activating those suction heads which are to function to pick a box from a layer of product. The vacuum pickup head including the suction cup has a casing with an interior vacuum chamber controlled by a motor-operated valve member which, in one position, connects an operating negative pressure to a suction cup and, in another position, closes off the negative pressure and connects the suction cup to atmosphere. As part of the miniaturization, a plurality of suction cups are associated with a single valve member whereby the position of a single valve member controls the condition of a plurality of suction cups.

Article handling system

A vacuum pickup head used with a stacker crane or similar structure wherein a plurality of the heads are suitably arranged on a movable support. The vacuum pickup head has a casing with an interior vacuum chamber and a depending container-engaging sealing element to seal the space between the casing and a container. A bottom wall of the casing has an annular air passage to provide a large airflow connection of said space with the vacuum chamber. A linearly-movable valve plate is positioned beneath the bottom wall for movement relative to the bottom wall to open and close said annular passage and fluid-powered motor means are positioned within the casing for moving the valve plate.

Vacuum pickup head

A stacker crane is movable along horizontally spaced and vertically stacked bins to deposit and retrieve palletized loads comprised of stacked articles, at least some of which contain an inventory label. To take a physical inventory, an inventory pallet is carried on the transfer forks of the stacker crane. The inventory pallet contains a laser beam scanner which directs a scanning beam toward the rear of the palletized load. The stacker crane is automatically driven through a sequence which causes it to pass each bin in the warehouse. When the crane reverses direction, the laser beam scanner is driven along guides to an end location, and rotated 180.degree., to scan bins on the opposite side of the aisle. The scanned inventory data is remotely transmitted with the bin address data to an off-crane data recorder.

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Mendota, IL, United States of America

Harold S Burt