GB975889A - A method of and apparatus for conveying sheets from one location to another - Google Patents

Abstract

975,889. Feeding sheets. F. L. SMIDTH & GO. A.S. Nov. 14, 1963, No. 45083/63. Heading B6B. Sheets are conveyed from one position to another, such as from one pile to another pile, by a lifting device having at least one member for gripping the sheets, each point of the lifting device tracing a cycloid lying in a vertical plane and having a downwardly facing concavity and a vertical axis of symmetry. The cyloid may be curtate, in which the extension constitutes from 5 to 10% of the radius of the rolling circle of the cycloid. As described, the pile 1 comprises fibrous cement sheets alternating with separator sheets of steel &c., and the object is to place all the cement sheets on a pile 2, and all the separator sheets on a pile 3 by using two suction gripping members 25, 26 which have suction openings about the same size as the sheets. The piles rest on supports 4, 5, 6 carried by columns 7 which are hydraulically or pneumatically raised or lowered so the top sheets in the three piles are always at the same level, which is the lower working position of the suckers 25, 26. Four fixed columns 11 carry two members 10 on which a carriage 12 can be horizontally reciprocated by the rod 13 of a compressed air cylinder 14. The carriage 12 has four toothed wheels 15 which roll on racks 16 on the members 10, and a lifting frame 19 has draw-bars 18 journalled on crank-pins 17 which are mounted at points on the wheels just outside the peripheries of the rolling circles of the wheels. The arcs of the pins 17 thus describe curtate cycloidal paths 30, Fig. 2, and hence the lifting frame 19 and the suckers 25, 26 carried thereby also follow the same path. The suckers 25, 26 are connected by draw-bars 24 to yokes 23 which rest on the frame 19, the mating faces of the yokes and frame being ribbed. When a sucker rests on a pile, the frame 19 descends slightly lower so that the sucker can find its own level to accommodate irregular-shaped sheets. The sucker 25 lifts and deposits cement sheets, and the sucker 26 does likewise with the separator sheets, and they are connected by bellows 27, 28, respectively, to a suction fan 29. Where the sheets are corrugated, the lower outer edges of the suckers are similarly shaped. In a modification (Fig. 4, not shown), cement sheets are in two separate abutting piles, each separator sheet is common to both piles; and the cement sheets are separated to form two spaced piles, by providing on one -head double suckers which are close together when they pick up cement sheets from the abutting piles, and are then separated from each other prior to depositing the sheets. The double suckers are supported on a cross-frame, and are relatively displaceable by compressed - air cylinders. Where all the sheets in a pile are of ferromagnetic material, the suckers are replaced by magnetic heads.