Dish item removal from stack bottom - has rollers with spiral ridges engaging with dish flanges

摘要

The mechanism removes dish-shaped items with horizontal peripheral flanges one by one from a stack. A number of driven rollers each have a spiral ridge forming a peripheral ram track working with the flange of the lowermost item (10) and the one immediately above (11). These remove the lower most item while retaining the one above. The ridges (14) of the rollers (2,3) can each extend through roughly 630 deg., while for much of their length the top and bottom edges can be of different pitches, typically running horizontally and then sloping downwards alternately along the top edge and through 180 deg. or more at a time.