The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Aug. 15, 1989
Filed:
Mar. 04, 1988
Steven Tisma, Chicago, IL (US);
Tisma Machine Corporation, Chicago, IL (US);
Abstract
The invention greatly increases the speed at which a fill step may be completed in an automatic packaging machine. Instead of the usual process where a gate opens and closes for dumping product into each empty box, a plurality of bottomless measuring cups and transfer cups are moved in an aligned sequence with the corresponding boxes. These cups move over planar surfaces which function as the bottoms of the cups and keep the product in place within the cups. At selected locations, the cups pass over interruptions in the surfaces so that the product may fall out of the cup and into an underlying structure. The sequence is (a) measure product in a measuring cup, (b) drop the product from the measuring cup into a transfer cup, (c) deflect the path of the transfer cup is a box into which it would transfer its product is missing, (d) dump product form any non-deflected transfer cup into a corresponding box, (e) recover product from any deflected transfer cup, and (f) return the deflected transfer cup to a normal path after recovery of its products. The parts are arranged to greatly reduce set up time by making it easy to replace or exchange cups, to fill different sizes of boxes, for example.