Owens-Illinois, Inc.

Thomas B Sorbie

Darius O Riggs

John J Pezzin

Harold F Mohney

Ernest H Pemberton

Walter K Schoch

In the inspection of generally round glass containers where the containers are indexed into the gauging stations or positions by the movement of a starwheel mechanism, the containers are held in a generally upright attitude with their bottoms engaging a pair of spaced rollers extending through a slide plate at the gauging station. Each roller is biased in an upward direction against the container bottom. The containers are rotated, in station, by engagement of the sidewall thereof by a rotating wheel mounted on an axis that is somewhat out-of-vertical to aid in holding the container down against the rollers and slide plate. The gauging rollers each have their vertical movements drive the core of a separate differential transformer. The output of the transformers are amplified, alegebraically summed and fed to a discriminator. The tracking of the rollers is such that the output signals from the discriminator are a reflection of the relative positions of the rollers and the output is fed to a reject mechanism or indicator when a predetermined difference indicates that a 'leaner' container is being gauged.

Leaner gauge for narrow neck containers

There is described a plug and air warp gauge which takes the form of an elongated vertically, reciprocated gauging head that is mechanically driven under the influence of a rotating cam. Coaxially within an annular head is positioned a plug which has a diameter such that it will pass through an unchoked neck of a bottle. The plug is attached to the lower end of a tube which is coaxially positioned within a larger tube. The larger tube is raised and lowered mechanically and when in its uppermost position, will support the plug-carrying tube. When the larger tube is lowered, the plug tube also is lowered. The lower end of the larger tube is in the form of an annular piston which will move downward within a cylinder that seats on the bottle finish. As the annular piston moves down, it will pressurize the inside of the bottle and the cylinder if the seal with the finish of the bottle is good. After the arrival of the larger tube at its lowest position, both the pressure generated in the bottle and cylinder and the position of the plug tube are observed for determining the presence or absence of a defective bottle.

Combined plug and air warp neck finish gauge

Indexing mechanism for multiple station glassware inspection machines in which a plurality of pocketed starwheels are used. One set of pockets are formed with container encircling or restraining members which open and close in response to the contour of a box cam. The encircling members loosely retain containers so that they may be rotated about their vertical axes while held in a specific location. The finish of the containers is guided by an upper starwheel having pockets of a size commensurate with the size of the finish of the container. The containers to be inspected are brought into the starwheel with the encircling members opened. Upon closing of the encircling members, containers may be indexed through a series of positions where they may be inspected for various defects. Prior to arriving at the position where the containers are to be taken from the starwheel, the containers are oriented with their generally long, horizontal axes normal to the direction of movement of the conveyor for taking containers away. This apparatus permits rotation of non-round containers while still retaining the containers in a sufficiently precise location so as to permit both mechanical and optical inspection of various portions of the container.

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Toledo, OH, United States of America

Thomas B Sorbie