WO2000066435A1 - Linear motion apparatus capable of rejecting defective filter bags or similar envelopes - Google Patents

Abstract

This invention describes a linear motion device acting in a single working station equipped with a fixed plane, two seats and a single linear motion, capable of rejecting defective filter bags, of simultaneously inhibiting the feed of the paper lobe for the cover bag, of rejecting the bags with a defective cover bag and simultaneously of uniformly distributing an incoherent product inside the bag.

Description

FILTER BAG PACKAGING MACHINE

DESCRIPTION This invention refers to a linear motion device for the automatic ejection of individual filter bags originating from the work stations of a packaging machine and presenting some packaging defects such as to render them unacceptable by the consumer and prevent their usage for a further assembling phase in containers such as carton boxes and the like This device find s particular application in the packaging machines for filter bags for tea, camomile-tea herbs etc , where the individual filter bags may present packaging defects such as missing some packaging elements including the label, the tea in the bag, the handling thread, etc The mentioned filter bags may be of the dual-lobe type, meaning with a dual chamber with the bellows on bottom, or of the single lobe type, which are generally completed by associating them with a pick-up label and a handling thread by some well known anchoring methods (metal clasp, thermally welded stamp, sewing, knotting, simple thermal welding with the filter paper, etc ), or may be filter bags without a thread and label, of various forms (square, rectangular, round etc ) All these bags may accumulate particular defects, at the various work stations of the machine, so as to seriously affect their presentation to the public and/or their subsequent assembly at other downstream work stations of the machine this refers, for instance, to a case where the top sealing folds of a dual-lobe bag have not been properly executed and appear to be distorted with respect to the bag's axis of symmetry, or to a case where, because of a lack of product, the pick-up label fails to be associated with the bag or the infusion material is not inserted into the bag, etc With reference to the mentioned cases and/or to other cases deriving from the same, it should be mentioned that the problem has always affected the manufacturing enterprises, so that all of today's packaging machines are equipped with a number of sensors and photocells which allow identifying the de fective bag and transmit the relative signal to an electronic control system, which cannot however eject the individual bag, but allows the machine, after memorizing the signal, to continue with the subsequent assembly of the bags (whether defective or not) in the containment boxes, and controls the rejection of the entire box containing both the proper and the defective bags only at the end, thus causing a great waste of material and loss of time for the subsequent manual control of the defective bags, with the resulting high industrial packaging costs.

Another serious problem directly related to the former resides in the fact that the filter bags are, for a better protection of their infusion material content, generally packaged inside an outer bag of ordinary or thermally welded paper known as a cover bag. In the case of a defective filter bag, the present packaging machines equipped as above fail to prevent, as it would be desirable, the feeding and packaging of the cover bag but are, despite the memorization of the defective bag and therefore the certainty of a final rejection, still allowing the filter bag to be inserted into its cover bag, with an additional wastage of material and high production costs. In addition to the two mentioned defects which are attributable to an industrial packaging problem in terms of both wasted material and high production costs leading to a doubtful quality of some packages and a negative impact on the environment because of a larger volume of products to be disposed of as rejects, there's also a further packaging problem affecting the infusion material inside the filter bag. In this regard, it should be noted that all infusion products such as tea, camomile- tea and others are highly incoherent, in the sense that after being dosed they distribute within the bags in a volumetrically differentiated manner, so that the bags containing them present a more encumbering size in certain areas rather than in others, for instance at the corners rather than at the center, or on the bottom rather than at the top This high degree of irregularity in the distribution of the product inside the bag appears in all its evidence in the assembling phase of the bags and in the subsequent stage of inserting them into the carton boxes, which may therefore require a packaging of considerable encumbrance, thus further aggravating the problem of wasting material and causing high packaging costs A further problem likely to arise is that the defect may only occur in the cover bag, meaning that the cover bag, despite the proper packaging of the filter bag contained in the same, presents defects such as for instance a distorted topside sealing or an asymmetrical fitting of the lateral edges, etc Even in this case the packaging machines, while equipped with electronic control systems, act to waste the entire box containing all the bags, and not merely the individual package containing the defective bag The above description easily allows to grasp that the packaging machines, despite identifying the defective bag wastage problem with or without a cover bag well in advance, and despite being equipped with a number of control sensors, fail to simultaneously resolve (and that's the innovative feature of this invention) the quadruple problem of automatically rejecting the individual defective bag, saving the cover bags applied over the defective bag, wasting the filter bag along with the cover bag whenever the defect resides in the cover bag only, and uniformly distributing the product inside the bag, so as to allow their assembly in more compact sizes and a more economical final packaging step The purpose of this invention, as characterized in the description and in the claims to follow, is therefore to eliminate the four drawbacks mentioned above, by a linear motion device acting in a single working station equipped with a fixed plane, two seats and a single linear motion (which constitutes a further innovative feature of this invention), capable of rejecting the individual defective filter bags, of simultaneously inhibiting the feed of the paper lobe for the cover bag, of rejecting the bags with a defective cover bag and simultaneously of uniformly distributing an incoherent product inside a bag's differential containment volume in a dual lengthwise and crosswise direction of the bag Further advantages and characteristics of the invention will be better evident from the detailed description to follow, which refers for purely practical reasons to a dual-lobe filter bag, representing the bag in widest use, while emphasizing that the device may be utilized for filter bags of other and differentiated shapes or for paper bags containing infusion products or other incoherent materials The following description refers to the (attached) Figure 1 which illustrates a prospective view of the device (2) as an object of this invention, associated with a packaging machine (1 ) which is partially shown in Figure 1 by the pincer head in its product discharging configuration In accordance with the attached Figure 1 , the invention essentially consists of a device (2) capable of linearly shifting the filter bag, with or without a cover bag, from the packaging machine to the automatic counting and assembling station The device (2) associated with the packaging machine (1 ) is positioned between the filter bag extracting station (3) where the bags are individually extracted from the machine by conventional pincers (4), and the counting and assembling station (5), where the bags are packaged and inserted into their carton boxes

In particular, the device (2) comprises a single work station constituted by a first receiving seat (6a) of a bag (7) equipped with two lateral half plates (8) supporting the bag (7), capable of moving at an angle and rotating around themselves in accordance with a preset angular shift around a fulcrum (9) having an axis essentially parallel to the longitudinal direction of the two half plates (8) The angular opening of the two half plates (8) is controlled, while rotating around the fulcrum (9), by a drive separate from that of the pusher, so as to allow them to open only when needed The device (2) also comprises a second seat (6b) for receiving a bag (7) coming from the seat (6a), where said

RECTIFIED SHEET (RULE 91) seat (6b) is fitted with a surface opening essentially identical to the size of the filter bag (7) and capable of introducing individual filter bags (7) into the subsequent counting and assembling station (5)

Other elements and features characterizing the device (2) are evidenced in the following description the pincers (4) extract the individual filter bag (7) from the packaging machine (1 ) and place it next to the seat (6a), where a first compactor (10) angularly rotating around its axis y-y takes care of pressure- positioning the filter bag (7) on the half plates (8) facing a pusher (11 ) which shifts the filter bag (7) with a linear motion "X" to its subsequent seat (6b), where a second compactor (12) takes care of introducing it into the subsequent counting and assembling station (5)

In case the filter bag (7) originating from the packaging machine (1 ) presents any packaging defect noted by the various control sensors installed on the machine, an electromechanical device controls the angular opening of the two half plates (8) around their respective fulcra (9), so that the compactor (10) manages, while pressing down on the filter bag (7), to eject the same through an opening provided below the two half plates (8), as may more easily be seen in Figure 2, thus preventing the pusher (11 ), which is at any rate intermittently pursuing its shifting motion with every machine cycle, from conveying the defective bag into its seat (6b) In case the filter bag does not have any packaging defect, it is backed up, with the aid of the compactor (10), on the two normally closed half plates (8), where the pusher (11 ) takes care, by its cyclically intermittent shifting motion (X), of pushing it ower to its subsequent seat (6b), where the compactor (12) can introduce it into the counting and assembling station (5) In combination with the packaging machine the device (2) is also capable of receiving the packaged filter bag in a paper envelope commonly known as a cover bag In other words, before feeding the filter bag the known and conventional methods introduce a paper lobe which has already been cut and asymmetrically folded at its bottom in a "V" shaped fashion, so as to subsequently receive the filter bag and be hermetically sealed in a bag and cover bag assembly. In this case the pincers (4) extract the cover bag containing the filter bag from the top (1 ). In this combination the device (2) allows receiving only cover bag packages in its seat (6a), whose internal filter bags are entirely fault-free. In fact, if the various control sensors notice any packaging defects on the bag (7) and the device (2) consequently prepares to open its half plates (8) for an automatic rejection of said preset filter bag (7), a conventional electromechanical device associated with the device (2) prevents the paper lobe of the cover bag from being cut off and inserted into the pincers at the top (1), so as to prevent it from being uselessly packaged together with the filter bag (7) already destined to be ejected from the device (2). There is only one case where the entire package, in its filter bag and cover bag combination, may be ejected from the seat (6a) by the joint action of the compactor (10) and the two angularly opened half plates: this happens where the packaging defect is noted only on the cover bag, for example as an irregular fitting of the rims or as a distorted sealing of its longitudinal and transversal lobes. In an advantageous manner, the device (2) has also been designed so that during all the extracting operations (3) of the filter bag and its linear shifting (X) by the pusher (11 ), all the devices characterizing the mentioned operations take care of uniformly distributing, in a dual (longitudinal and transversal) direction with respect to the axis of the bag, the incoherent product contained in the bag and volumetrically displaced to the bottom of the bag during its packaging position at the top 1 ). The extraction pincers (4) are in fact conveying the bag (7), at the point of its stop in the position (13), against the vertical wall of the fixed plane 814), thus causing, as a result of the known effects of inertial forces, the forced longitudinal sliding of the product from the bottom X to the top D of the bag. In the following the pusher (11 ) causes the bag (7) to linearly shift at high speed in the direction (C), thus conveying it at the end of its run against the vertical wall of the additional fixed plane (15), thus inducing the forced shifting of the product, because of the usual inertial effects, in a transversal direction E-F with respect to the bag's longitudinal axis C-D. The above invention is obviously susceptible of undergoing numerous modifications and variants suggested by its practical application, its execution and usage, all of which are however falling within the scope of the following claims.

Claims

1. A linear motion device (2) for the automatic ejection of the individual filter bags (7) and the simultaneous two-way uniform distribution of an incoherent product inside said filter bags (7) both in their longitudinal direction C-D and their transversal direction E-F, where said device (2) is characterized in that it comprises a work station (2a) equipped with two vertical back-up plates (14) and (15), a first seat (6a) and a second seat (6b) for receiving a filter bag (7), a pusher (11 ) for a linear shifting of the filter bag (7) and some devices (10) and (12) for the compacting of said filter bag (7) in the first seat (6a) and in the second seat (6b); where said first vertical plate (14) is capable of backing up the filter bag (7) at a point facing the opening and the sudden stop of the pincers (4) at the end of their run (13), thus causing, as a result of its impact and subsequent inertial motion, a first forced sliding of the filter bag's product in a longitudinal direction C-D, where said first seat (6a) is constituted by two lateral half plates (8) for the backing up and sliding of said filter bag (7), and said half plates (8) are endowed with an angular motion and therefore capable of rotating around themselves around their fulcrum (9) so as to allow the opening of an underlying space (Fig. 2) and to therefore favor the ejection of the defective filter bag (7); where said pusher (11 ) is endowed with an intermittent linear shifting motion and capable of shifting the filter bag (7) in the direction (X) and away from said first seat (6a) to said second seat (6b), known as a collective assembly station, opposite to which the said pusher (11 ), because of its sudden stop, conveys the filter bag (7) against the vertical plate (15), thus causing, as a result of its impact and consequent inertial motion, the second forced sliding of the product inside the filter bag in the transversal direction E-F.

2. A device according to claim 1 , characterized in that it comprises, in mutual combination, some devices for extracting (4) and for compacting and introducing the bag into the seat (6a). 3 A device according to claims 1 and 2, characterized in that the compacting devices (10) also serves for the forced ejection of the defective filter bag (7) at a point coinciding with the angular opening of the lateral half plates (8)

4 A device according to claims 1 , 2 and 3, characterized in that said ejecting devices also comprise, in addition to the compactor (10), an opening providing two half plates (8) rotating around their fulcrum (9) and opening in an angular manner, capable of alternately keeping the seat for receiving the filter bag (7) closed or communicating with an underlying space for discharging the bag (Figure 2) 5 A device according to claim 4, characterized in that the opening of said lateral half plates (8) is controlled by a motorized drive independent of that for the pusher (11 )

6 A device according to claims 1 , 2, 3, 4 and 5, characterized in that the sliding of the filter bags (7) is induced by a pusher (11 ) endowed with a linear and rectilinear motion, capable of causing the filter bags (11 ) to slide from the seat (6a) to the seat (6b) on an essentially flat surface

7 A device according to any of the claims from 1 to 6, characterized in that it prevents, by an independent motorized drive, the feeding of an ordinary or thermally welded paper lobe, known as cover bag, over its top (1 ), thus preventing said top 1 ) as well as the ejecting devices (10) and (8) from rejecting only the defective filter bag (7) and not also the filter bag plus cover bag assembly

8 A device according to any of the claims from 1 to 7, characterized in that the product to be automatically extracted and rejected is a cover bag containing a filter bag, where said cover bag is made of ordinary or thermally welded paper

9 A device according to any of the claims from 1 to 8, characterized in that the product to be automatically extracted and rejected is any kind of ordinary or thermally welded paper containing an incoherent product 10 A machine for packaging said filter bags characterized in that it comprises a device (2) according to any of the claims from 1 to 8

11 A machine according to claim 10, characterized in that said device (2) is positioned between the extracting station (3) of the filter bags and the collective counting and assembling station (5) of the filter bags

12 A device according to claim 10, characterized in that it comprises a first independent motorized drive controlling the pusher (11 ), a second independent motorized drive controlling the two rotating half plates (8), and a third independent motorized drive feeding and cutting the paper for the cover bag 13 A filter bag conveying system comprising

- devices (3, 10) capable of introducing a filter bag into a first position (6a),

- devices (12) capable of ejecting a filter bag from a second position (6b), and

- devices (8, 11 , 14) capable of linearly moving a filter bag between said first position (6a) and said second position (6b), where

- some devices (15) are provided, capable of intercepting the filter bag reaching said second position (6b), and where

- the ejection of the filter bag from said second position occurs in a direction essentially perpendicular to the direction of motion of the bag from said first to said second position (6a and 6b)

14 A conveyor according to claim 14, where the motion of the filter bag between said first and second position (6a and 6b) is produced by a pusher (11 ) 15 A conveyor according to claims 13 or 14, which provides for devices (8, 10) capable of ejecting the filter bag from said first position (6a) 16 A conveyor according to claim 15, where said devices (8, 10) capable of ejecting the filter bag from said first position also comprise an opening with at least one mobile gate (8), where said mobile gate is controlled by a motorized drive independent of that for the motion of the bag from the first to the second position (6a and 6b)

17 A conveyor according to claim 16, where said devices capable of ejecting a filter bag from said first position comprise a pusher (10) acting in the direction of said opening with at least one mobile gate

18 A device, machine or conveyor according to the foregoing claims, to the above description and as illustrated in the enclosed figures and drawings