| 摘要 |
The present invention relates to a tool changer mechanism operative to effect a bodily interchange of a pair of toolholders respectively mounted in spaced apart parallelism in an operating station and a storage station. To effect a tool interchange, a pair of independent and oppositely rotatable toolholder arms, are normally positioned in a vertical or substantially parallel parked position about a common parallel axis, between the horizontally spaced apart operating and storage stations respectively. Each of the toolholder arms is provided towards its opposite ends with inwardly or oppositely disposed semicircular openings movable toward one another into opposed or clamped tool encompassing relationship. The arms are interconnected to be controlled by a novel reversing mechanism to effect clockwise rotation of one arm simultaneously with effecting counterclockwise rotation of the other arm. By means of this arrangement, the inner and outer arms are initially rotated 90 DEG in opposite directions to move the semicircular openings toward one another into a fully enclosed clamped position about the spaced apart toolholders carried in spaced apart parallelism in the operating station and storage station respectively. After urging the separate arms into fully enclosed gripping engagement with the spaced apart tools, a transverse cylinder is actuated to simultaneously move both oppositely clamped arms rectilinearly outward to extract the fully enclosed or clamped tools from the respective sockets. Next, with both arms still locked in enclosed tool engaging position, the entire assembly is rotated 180 DEG to bodily interchange the positions of the enclosed tools relative to the spaced apart storage and operating stations. The assembly is then reversibly moved rectilineally inward to reinsert the now interchanged tools after which the reverse mechanism is again operated to reactuate the arms in independent reversed direction to return parked position. |
