GB674460A - Improvements in machines for dispensing rod-like articles such as sugarcane setts - Google Patents

Abstract

674,460. Dispensing sugar cane setts. HULETT, R. S. L. May 4, 1950. [May 10, 1949; April 1, 1950] No. 11089/50. Class 78 (i). A machine for dispensing individual rodlike articles from a mass of such articles, includes a hopper for a mass of articles the width of which hopper exceeds the length of the articles to be dispensed, a discharge passage extending from the hopper and communicating with the hopper through an elongated throat long and wide enough to permit a single article to pass breadth ways therethrough, a displaceable element biased to obstruct the throat, selecting means to select a succession of individual articles from the mass in the hopper and to present each in turn to the throat, isolating means to isolate each selected article in turn from this succession of selected articles, and ejecting means to displace the obstructing element and to eject the selected article through the throat. Fig. V. Sugar cane setts are fed by endless conveyer 8 to fall into hopper 11 wherein they are pushed (manually) by pusher 12 on to platform 16 down which they roll being fed forward by roll 17 and by roll 19, and slide forward past roll 23 whenever the fingers 24 thereon are retracted as said roll rotates, so that the sett is discharged past spring loaded flap 2 1 by endless rotating chains 22. The effect is that the setts are fed as a uniform stream by rolls 17 and 19 and as isolated individuals by roll 23, the fingers 24 of which project into the path of the setts and knock back or retard surplus setts. The three rolls are driven from the wheels of the carriage on which the apparatus is placed, the carriage being tugged by a tractor. Pickets 38 prevent excess setts touching chains 22 and one of the pickets 38 carries a spring secured to its lower end, the said spring engaging a sugar cane sett as it emerges and causing it tu fall in an inclined position into the furrow in the ground.