Wm. C. Staley Machinery Corporation

The Ward Machinery Company

Prime Technology LLC

Louis M Sardella

John B West

John R Harrison

Dennis J Parr

William F Ward, Jr

Edward H Harrison

A feeder for paperboard blanks includes a transport, vertical relationship changing structure to alternately provide active and passive positions for the transport, a suction device, and a transmission with input and output shafts operatively connected so that the output shaft undergoes controlled acceleration during an initial portion of each revolution of the input shaft, whereby the transport engages and grips a blank by static friction and moves accelerates that blank to nip rolls without slippage occurring and so that each blank enters the nip rolls in register whereupon the blank is disengaged from the transport.

Intermittently protruding feeder for paperboard blanks

A rotary feeder feeds sheets or board-like articles to nip rolls in a box-making machine. The boards are successively and individually fed from the bottom of a stack whose forward edge engages a gate below which the boards are fed by driven feed members such as wheels, rolls or endless belts which engage the underside of the lowermost board. To raise and lower the boards relative to the surface of the feed members, a vertically reciprocable grate is provided between the drive members. The grate and drive members are mounted in a vacuum box in which a vacuum is established to hold the boards in proper position on the feed members when the grate is lowered. The vacuum is also utilized to hold the boards with sufficient force to produce necessary friction between the boards and the feed members for feeding. The feed members are driven through an oscillating rocker shaft and gearing in two opposite directions, one of which serves to convey the boards below the gate to the nip rolls and the other of which serves to relieve pressure of the board against the gate prior to conveyance to the nip rolls. The grate is actuated through oscillatable shafts connected to the grate and driven from a cam and cam-follower assembly which, in turn, is driven from a crank gear that is also employed to drive the rocker shaft through a linkage or quick return slide mechanism. A latch device is also provided to releasably hold the grate in raised position above the feed members to interrupt the feeding operation.

Rotary-type feeder machines and methods

A feeder for paperboard blanks includes a transport, vertical relationship changing structure to alternately provide action and passive positions for the transport, a suction device, and a transmission with input and output shafts operatively connected so that the output shaft undergoes controlled acceleration during an initial portion of each revolution of the input shaft and is stationary during a last portion of each revolution of the input shaft, whereby the transport engages and grips a blank by static friction and moves and accelerates that blank to nip rolls without slippage occurring and so that each blank enters the nip rolls in register whereupon the blank is disengaged from the transport.

Apparatus for mounting a flexible printing plate comprises a printing cylinder having a surface upon which the printing plate is mountable, and a connection for applying subatmospheric pressure inside the cylinder. A plurality of valves selectively apply the subatmospheric pressure to the surface from inside the cylinder. These valves have depressable actuating members protrudable above the cylinder surface. Those actuating members contacted by the printing plate when applied to the cylinder surface are depressed thereby to effect application of subatmospheric pressure to beneath the printing plate to draw the plate against the cylinder. Preferably, grooves are provided in the cylinder surface for distribution of the subatmospheric pressure beneath the plate. Advantageously, the printing plate may have a thin, highly flexible and deformable fringe along its trailing edge to seal the surface grooves, at that location. This mounting arrangement facilitates quick changing of printing plates during printing operations.

Mounting printing plates

Die mounting apparatus

A feeder for paperboard blanks includes a transport, vertical relationship changing structure to alternately provide active and passive positions for the transport a suction device, and a transmission with input and output shafts operatively connected so that the output shaft undergoes controlled acceleration during an initial portion of each revolution of the input shaft and is stationary during a last portion of each revolution of the input shaft, whereby the transport engages and grips a blank by static friction and moves and accelerates that blank to nip rolls without slippage occurring and so that each blank enters the nip rolls in register whereupon the blank is disengaged from the transport.

A method and an apparatus for stacking serially advancing parallel streams of blanks, such as corrugated paperboard blanks, by serially advancing such parallel streams in which there are spaces between pairs of such blanks in each of the streams but no spaces between the blanks of the pairs, creating spaces between the blanks of each pair during advance, stopping the advance of the blanks one after the other, and guiding succeeding spaced blanks one on top of the other to form a stack of blanks from each stream.

Method and apparatus for stacking serially advancing parallel streams of

A feeder for paperboard blanks includes feed wheels, a vacuum box, a camming assembly to change the vertical relationship between the feed wheels and the top of the vacuum box, and an indexing transmission.

Apparatus for directing a flow of air between the bottom blank of a stack and a blank advancing beneath the stack, particularly for corrugated paperboard counter stacker machines, comprising an air supply means adjacent the trailing edge of the bottom blank adapted to direct the flow of air beneath the bottom blank and above the advancing blank to form a cushion of air therebetween for reducing sliding friction between such blanks.

Air lift for blank stackers

Apparatus for folding paperboard blanks, fed one by one in timed sequence into said apparatus and transported through it, includes helical blank contacting means rotatable in time with the transport means about a longitudinal axis extending generally in the direction of travel.

Helical folder for paperboard blanks

A rotary feeder for paperboard blanks includes suction means, partially relieved feed wheels and a transmission with input and output shafts operatively connected so that the output shaft undergoes a controlled acceleration during an initial portion of each revolution of the input shaft and is stationary during a last portion of each revolution of the input shaft, whereby the wheels engage and grip a blank by means of static friction and move and accelerate that blank to the nip rolls without slippage occurring and so that each blank enters the nip rolls in register.

Growing community of inventors

Towson, MD, United States of America

Louis M Sardella