Infeed section for packaging apparatus

摘要

An apparatus for feeding, stacking, and/or upending products includes a pair of indexing star wheels. A conveyor advances a row of products toward an upstream star wheel. One or more products are metered into one of the notches in the upstream star wheel, and the upstream star wheel indexes to transfer the products to the downstream star wheel. The upstream star wheel can stack products by indexing twice before the downstream star wheel indexes. The downstream star wheel indexes to upend the products, and the upended products are moved away from the downstream star wheel.