Preform feed mechanism for cartons

摘要

The carton preforms (10) are stacked (1) between a control stop (12) over the conveyor and a rear stop (13). The lowest preform is taken by the belt conveyor and is moved under the control stop past a sensor (4) over the end of the conveyor. This fixes the position of the leading edge of the preform before it is gripped by two feed rollers (22,23) to move to the next process (25). The speed of the conveyor is adjusted to enable the preform to feed into the next process at the correct time and speed. The next process can be a cyclic process and the feed rate of the conveyor is adjusted to ensure that the preceding preform has left the process before the leading edge of the next preform is fed to the feed rollers.