Stack handling machine for personal hygiene pads - uses vertical drum with four cavities spaced at 90 degrees and having vertical stack pushed into side cavities and then extracted

摘要

A pile of objects, such as napkins, is from a vertical stack of articles, each oriented in a horizontal plane, to a horizontal stack, that is with the articles oriented vertically, to facilitate packaging. A vertical rotating drum (14) having four cavities (20,22,24,26) symmetrically placed about its horizontal axis of rotation (16) has a vertical stack pushed into the cavity which is in the same horizontal plane as the axis. The cavity is sufficiently filled for the articles to hold their position as the drum is rotated through ninety degrees, resulting in the orientation of the articles in the now top and bottom cavities being vertical, that is forming a horizontal stack. The horizontal stack can then be pushed out of the cavity by a pushrod mechanism onto a packaging machine.