Apparatus for assembling fiberglass grating from pultruded fiberglass

Abstract

An apparatus for assembling a fiberglass reinforced grating from preformed bearing bars and cross bars includes an elongated open frame table having a plurality of rollers in side-by-side fashion with their axes transverse to the longitudinal axis of the table and supporting a set of upwardly upright transversely spaced bearing bars on the peripheries of the rollers. A loading rack formed of vertically upright transversely spaced spacing and alignment pins controls the lateral spacing of the bearing bars. A raisable stop upstream of a grooving station aligns the ends of the bearing bars. A vertically shiftable hold press hold down bar operates alternately with a vertically shiftable car press hold down bar and the car press is incremented which frictionally presses the bearing bars against the tabletop rollers to increment the set of bearing bars upon release of the hold press hold down bar. A transversely movable grooving head has a pair of rotary saw blades offset transversely and having slightly crossed tips to form X-shaped grooves or notches within the tops of the bearing bars. A glue application unit selectively drips liquid adhesive onto the notches. A hydraulic tie bar press presses a cross bar having outwardly flared resilient legs into the inverted V-shaped notches on the tie bars to mechanically interlock the cross bars and tie bars to form a grating section- A grating severing apparatus trims the ends of the grating preform.