R. A. Jones Co., Inc.

Michael E Myers

Joseph D Greenwell

Robert M Kalany

Mark R Nease

Eric W Scarpa

Jerome M Brugger

Daniel J Rack

Steven F Mustain

Wickliffe Jones, Deceased

Richard A Schaeffer

A pouch filling apparatus for filling pouches with product as the pouches travel around a filler wheel includes a hopper wheel carrying a plurality of hoppers over a sector of the filler wheel empty of pouches. The filler wheel carries a plurality of product dispensing units having an upper accumulation chamber. The hopper wheel and the filler wheel counter-rotate in timed relation so that individual product dispensing units and hoppers cross paths at a product transfer station to allow product to be dropped from a hopper into the accumulation chamber of a product dispensing unit. The filler wheel then rotates to a filling station and the product is released from the accumulation chamber into a pouch travelling along the pouch conveyor. In one embodiment, the product dispensing unit includes a lower expandable cone assembly which is lowered into the pouch at the filling station and expanded before the product is released from the accumulation chamber to form the pouch mouth into a substantially circular configuration. Alternative pouch expanders and product accumulation apparatus are described, as well as methods.

Product holding hopper and pouch expander for filling pouches and methods

A rotary disc feeder includes a rotary plate with a plurality of radial slots and sliders disposed in the slots. The sliders are cam adjusted to define, respective volumetric chambers between their ends and the slot ends. The cams are carried on a rotational cam carrier positioned by an axially reciprocable but non-rotary positioner. The size of the volumetric chambers is adjusted on the fly. A hopper drops product into the chambers rotating thereunder. Product is dropped from the chambers through a slot in a shutter plate angularly spaced from the hopper. The chambers have a relatively extensive, open cross-section compared to chamber length and small doses of light density, static sensitive product is measured and dispensed rapidly.

Rotary disc feeder

A web of pouches is fed past a detector. Inflating mechanism inflates individual pouches to create individual profiles. The detector responds to the appearance of a preselected distance between the surface of the pouch and the detector as each pouch passes the detector.

Pouch profile detector

A web is folded upon itself and transversely sealed. The web is cut into individual pouches which are fed into gripper units, on an endless conveyor, each having a fixed leading jaw and a movable trailing jaw which grip the leading and trailing edges of the pouches. To open a pouch, the trailing jaw is moved toward the fixed jaw by a cam and held in position by friction. Each opened pouch is carried around a filler unit where it is filled. Thereafter, a cam causes said jaws to spread apart, stretching the mouth of the pouch, where it is sealed in a heat sealer.

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Bellevue, KY, United States of America

Michael E Myers