General Foods Limited

William M Marks

Robert F Bardsley

Associated with a horizontal pouch making machine for packaging a free flowing granular product between webs of flexible packaging material is a product lay down mechanism operable for receiving measured amounts of the product and depositing it in precisely defined areas of one of the webs being processed and in a flattened configuration such as to minimize the amount of packaging material required to contain said product. A product shaping member contacting the web surface during a dwell in the web feed cycle is formed with apertures which in combination with the web define cavities or molds which shape each deposit of product delivered thereto into the desired configuration having uniform height over substantially the entire surface area of the web portion upon which it is laid.

Product shaping mechanism for horizontal pouch-making machines

Several different webs of textile material or other like fabric are simultaneously unwound from their respective rolls and are fed in intermittent stepwise fashion in superposed relation to one another to the bed of a cutting press. The press head is provided with cutting knives arranged to sever from each web along its leading edge a strip portion of predetermined area which in turn is subdivided by the cutting knives into sections each comprising a pile of individual swatches. The press head is also provided with a plurality of stitching devices arranged to bind together during each cyclic operation of the press head the several swatches of each section severed from the respective layers of web material so as to form a corresponding plurality of bound swatch pads. Upon the return stroke of the press head, the bound pads are removed from the bed of the press in preparation for the next web cutting and stitching operation. If desired, each pad is also provided with a backing or support sheet of cardboard or the like. This is accomplished by feeding a strip of such backing material into the press bed in a direction transverse to the direction of web feed so as to register with the leading edges of the several superposed webs of fabric, whereby on the cutting and stitching stroke of the press head the strip of backing material will also be subdivided into sections each of which will be stitched to the pile of individual swatches in superposed registry therewith to thereby form swatch pads having a backing support integral therewith.

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Irvington, NY, United States of America

William M Marks