Oscar Mayer & Co. Inc.

James L Balch

James E Anderson

Boleslaus J Sadeski

A product grouping station in a system for offloading bacon strips or the like comprises hydraulically-actuated lifters which lift groups of the bacon strips clear of the unidirectionally driven conveyor as they proceed away from the transfer station, and then release the groups in time sequence to achieve separation on the conveyor. The product grouping station is particularly adapted to handling thin strip-like products such as bacon slices, and employ novel control circuitry to obtain a continuous uniform operation for the offloading system which does not interfere with the operation of the continuously moving conveyor belt.

System for offloading articles from a conveyor belt

A system for loading a continuously moving conveyor belt comprises a slicer for producing bacon strips from a bacon slab, a conveyor for conveying bacon strips from the slicer, and a transfer station for transferring bacon strips from a serial arrangement on the conveyor to a side-by-side arrangement of spaced transverse rows on the continuously moving conveyor belt. A novel control system is provided to coordinate the operation of the slicer and the transfer station to obtain a continuous and uniform loading of the conveyor belt and to avoid the production of partial or deformed bacon strips by the slicer. The loading system is particularly well adapted to loading unfried bacon strips onto the conveyor of a bacon frying oven.

Conveyor loading system

A system for offloading bacon strips arranged side-by-side in equally spaced transverse rows on a continuously moving conveyor belt comprises a transfer station for transferring bacon strips from the conveyor belt to a serial arrangement on a second unidirectionally driven conveyor, a product grouping station for rearranging the bacon strips into groups, and a paper feed station for placing the groups on sheets of parchment paper prior to packaging. The transfer station includes a cyclically driven carriage which transfers the bacon strips in each transverse row from a carriage loading station comprising a plurality of cantilevered rotatably driven rollers contiguous to the conveyor belt to a carriage offloading station comprising a plurality of cantilevered conveyor belt assemblies. The product grouping station comprises hydraulically-actuated lifters which lift groups of the bacon strips clear of the unidirectionally driven conveyor as they proceed away from the transfer station, and then release the groups in time sequence to achieve separation on the conveyor. The transfer and product grouping stations are particularly adapted to handling thin strip-like products such as bacon slices, and employ novel control circuitry to obtain a continuous uniform operation for the loading system which does not interfere with the operation of the continuously moving conveyor belt. The system is particularly well suited for offloading fried bacon strips from the conveyor of a bacon frying oven.

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Madison, WI, United States of America

James L Balch