Mannesmann Dematic Rapistan Corp.

Rapistan Systems Advertising Corp.

Rapistan Demag Corporation

Rapistan Division, Lear Siegler, Inc.

Rapitsan Division, Lear Siegler, Inc.

James T Shearer, Jr

William W Viet

Michael L Nitschke

A conveyor system having an endless conveying surface, a plurality of diverters, and diverting shoes transversely movable across the conveying surface, includes a diverting track network in operational connection with a controller. The controller measures the length of each package, while the diverting track network includes a plurality of upstream diverting tracks and at least one downstream diverting track. The controller selectively actuates a diverter associated with downstream diverting track and at least one diverter along a particular upstream diverting track to engage the package proximate to its leading and trailing end. The diverting track network is configured to initially move the package in a direction generally parallel to the direction of movement of the main conveyor, and out of alignment with the articles traveling therealong, and subsequently rotate the article so that when discharged to a branch conveyor, the leading end of the article is more nearly orthogonal to the direction of motion of the branch conveyor.

Conveyor system with diverting track network

A conveyor diverting system having an endless conveying surface and diverting shoes transversely movable across the conveying surface for diverting articles having an upstream and a downstream diverting track where the upstream diverting track is oriented parallel to the downstream diverting track for a portion of its length, and converges with the downstream diverting track along its other portion. The conveyor system further includes a controller which utilizes only the downstream diverting track if the article to be diverted is less than a first predetermined length or greater than a second predetermined length. If the article to be diverted is between the first predetermined length and the second predetermined length, then both diverting tracks are utilized.

Conveyor sortation system with parallel divert

An article conveying system of the type having a conveying surface defined by the uppermost ones of a plurality of slats interconnected in an endless web for displacing articles laterally with respect to the conveying surface and including a diverter shoe movably mounted to each slat, includes a system of parallel tracks and diverting gates to independently selectively move one or more diverter shoes laterally while maintaining lengthwise alignment of the selected shoes in order to displace an article without rotation of the article. A control senses both the position of articles and the position of shoes in order to determine the relative spacing between shoes and articles. This allows the control to determine whether a shoe assigned to an article interferes with another article to accommodate article spacing of less than one shoe. Articles may be displaced using only one or two shoes by determining that the shoe is properly positioned with respect to the article. A divert control module maintains a dynamic accumulated article length for the accumulation section of a take-off conveyor based on article-length data received from a central sort controller, spur take-off speed and the time from the most recent divert in order to determine whether an article may be diverted to the associated spur.

Segmented pusher control for conveying system

In a system for controlling the horizontal and vertical alignment of a materials handling vehicle and for transferring articles to and from storage locations of a warehousing system in which several control sensors are positioned on the materials handling vehicle, a monitoring method and circuit for determing the operational status of the sensors by monitoring their status during a selected portion of a cycle of operation when their output is known. In one embodiment sensor outputs are cross checked against each other during a portion of an operating cycle in which the sensors outputs will be at a predetermined relationship to one another.

Vehicle sensor monitoring system

A system for accurately controlling the horizontal and vertical alignment of a materials handling vehicle with storage locations of a materials storage system includes a target positioned at a predetermined location with respect to each storage location and a sensor positioned on the materials handling vehicle and including three detectors positioned in a triangular pattern and responsive to the alignment of the detectors with a target to provide control signals employed to control the positioning of the vehicle for the accurate horizontal and vertical alignment of the vehicle with storage locations of the system.

Growing community of inventors

Ada, MI, United States of America

James T Shearer, Jr