APPARATUS FOR ORIENTING BOWLING PINS AND FOR SORTING THE BALL AND PINS

摘要

An apparatus for orienting bowling pins and separating the ball from the pins has a rotating disk which lies at a slight angle to the horizontal and which is surrounded by a non-rotatable collar formed at the low side of the disk with an aperture. The width of the aperture is less than the distance from the light pin end to the pin's center of gravity and less than the distance from this center of gravity to the heavy pin end so that pins traveling around the inside of the collar due to the disk rotation will fall out through the aperture if they are traveling heavy end first. For the other pins a catch plate is provided which reverses their leading ends so that they can drop out on their next passage past the aperture. A deflector is provided spaced above the disk by a distance smaller than the ball diameter and greater than the pin thickness to guide balls into a raisable seat in the disk's center. A hydraulic cylinder can raise this seat and displace the ball from the seat in the raised condition into a ball-return chute.