Stacking apparatus and method that reorients product units along a generally helical line while being conveyed from a loading station to an unloading station

摘要

A method and apparatus for stacking and conveying product units. The product units are conveyed on a conveyor from a loading station to an unloading station. The conveyor has a number of paddles extending therefrom where adjacent paddles define receptacles between them for holding the product units. The invention allows the products to be reoriented while being conveyed from the loading station to the unloading station so that the products arrive at the unloading station with the desired orientation. This eliminates separate steps and apparatuses for conveying and reorienting. The present invention does this by first loading at least one product unit into the product receptacles and conveying the product units along the longitudinal axis of the conveyor. The paddles are then reoriented along a generally helical line while the products are being conveyed from the loading station to the unloading station. The paddles are reoriented to a desired angle with respect to the longitudinal axis of the conveyor. The product units are unloaded at the unloading station as a stack by removing the product units from a plurality of product receptacles. The paddles are then reoriented and returned to their original position as when they were loaded.