| 摘要 |
1,154,218. Stacking articles. HARRIS-ECONOMY Ltd. 27 Nov., 1967 [1 Dec., 1966], No. 53777/66. Heading B8C. Apparatus for stacking articles in a plurality of horizontal layers includes endless conveyer means, means for changing the orientation of selected articles on the conveyer means, means for collecting a required number of articles on the conveyer means to provide a layer of articles, and means to transfer said layer of articles from the conveyer means on to a stacking support, the stacking support being adapted to move intermittently downwards in increments generally corresponding to the height of the particular layer of articles. In the apparatus shown ingots from a continuous casting machine are fed into a shoot 6 and thence to a conveyer belt 11. Selected ingots are turned over by a turning device 7, and a sensing device 12 and a stop device 13 control the feed of ingots forward to a turning device 16 by means of which selected ingots are rotated through 90 degrees by a rotating head 17 having gripping fingers 18, 19. A memory means actuated by sensing device 12 counts the ingots and causes the turning device 16 to operate on pre-selected pairs of ingots as required by the stack being formed. The ingots are thus fed in a preselected arrangement to transfer station 23 where they form a horizontal layer ready for transfer to stacking station 30. Once the required number of ingots are at the transfer station a stop 40 is operated. The transfer means consists of a ram operated pusher 27 which pushes the ingots off the belt 11 on to a plate 29 supported beneath the pusher plate 27, on the outward stroke of the ram. On the return stroke of the ram pawls 34 prevent withdrawal of the ingots with the plate 29 so that the ingots drop on to two fork bars 31 mounted on an hydraulic lift mechanism 32 forming the stacking means. A pivoted gate 35 is provided for assisting the positioning of the first layer of ingots on the bars 31. For each subsequent layer of ingots the lift mechanism is lowered the required distance and when the required stack is formed the whole stack is lowered on to the conveyer 38 and moved to a position for removal by a fork-lift truck. The stack shown in Fig. 1 comprises a bottom layer of four large ingots 1 longitudinally oriented, a next layer of smaller ingots 2 oriented so that there is a single ingot across each end with two longitudinally oriented ingots in the middle. The third layer is of similar formation to the first and the fourth of the second, and so on alternately upwards through the stack. The top layer is arranged similarly to the first layer except that all four ingots have been turned over. |
