Plastic bottle rotation restraint for capping machine

摘要

There is disclosed apparatus for incorporation in conventional bottle capping or bottle filling and capping machines to improve the handling of plastic bottles with pre-threaded screw caps and with a three dimensional bottom surface commonly employed and referred to as a petaloid shape. The normal flat table surface on which bottles rest while the cap is being screwed on is replaced with a surface having upstanding, radially-arranged fingers positioned to extend into all or most of the spaces between the lobes in the bottom of the petaloid bottle at each bottle capping station and form a nest for such bottles. Generally conventional bottle receiver and guide elements cause the bottles to assume a position substantially upright and coaxial with the center of the array of fingers for the particular bottle capping station. One embodiment of the apparatus includes a depression in the table surface to receive the bottom of a petaloid bottle and the fingers are located in that depression. Other embodiments of the apparatus have a generally flat surface except for the upstanding fingers. Most embodiments of the apparatus have no moving parts as such, but one embodiment has depressible, spring-loaded fingers to facilitate entrance and exit of the bottom of the bottle from the nest of fingers. The apparatus serves to prevent rotation of bottles as the screw caps are tightened without knives or pins engaging the top of the bottle as heretofore commonly employed.