Description:
The present invention relates to the packing of synthetic yarn packages formed on supports such as bobbins or pirns.
The enclosing in bags (hereinafter called packaging) and packing in cases or cartons packages of synthetic yarn have hitherto been carried out manually. That is, packages of yarn wound on bobbins with drawtwisters are each put into plastic bags with one end sealed after they have been subjected to visual inspection and encased in a paperboard carton having predetermined partitions to receive each package. U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,321,073, 3,306,439, 3,335,858 and 3,381,817 disclose cop packaging and a carton for storing packages.
Drawing speeds for synthetic yarn, however, have recently been increased to produce large packages of great dimensions and weight and it has become difficult and inefficient to package and pack such large packages manually.
Hence automation of the packaging and packing of packages has been desired, but was not completed until recently on account of the following difficulties: Synthetic yarn tends to easily slough and fuzz with a slight touch or rubbing on the surface of the package and becomes impossible to rewind and unserviceable. The accuracy of handling of packages sufficient enough to eliminate the above trouble was not obtained by the conventional mechanical operations.
The object of the present invention is to provide an apparatus with high reliability for packaging and packing the packages of synthetic yarn.
Another object of the present invention is to provide an apparatus for packaging and packing numerous packages at a time.
Still another object of the present invention is to provide an apparatus which is capable of avoiding injuring or staining packages of yarn during the packaging and packing operations.
A further object is the provision of a compact, inexpensive automatic packaging and packing apparatus for packages of yarn.
Other objects of the present invention will in part be obvious and will in part be apparent hereinafter.
The present invention relates to an apparatus for automatically and simultaneously packaging and encasing the packages of yarn. That is, the apparatus of the present invention comprises package supply means movable horizontally and vertically, bag-holding means movable horizontally, means of shifting cartons horizontally and vertically, control mechanism for the package supply means, the bagholding means and the means of shifting cartons, which is capable of detecting that the package supply means, the bag-holding means and the carton each have been positioned in place, lowering the package supply means for a predetermined distance, raising the carton for a predetermined distance with the means of shifting the carton and releasing the packages from the package supply means.
The package supply means comprise a shifter plate with bobbin arrestors mounted and an air cylinder or a motor for moving horizontally the shifter plate and vertically the bobbin arresters.
The bag-holding means consists of a pair of bag-holding bars provided with vacuum mechanism, device for engaging or disengaging one bag-holding bar with or from the other bag-holding bar and an air cylinder or a motor to move horizontally the bag-holding bars.
The means of shifting the carton is composed of a conveyor, preferably a roller type of conveyor and a lift table.
The control mechanism has numerous limit switches or photoelectric tubes for detecting the horizontal and vertical positions of the bobbin arresters, the bag-holding bars and the carton and send signals to each means according to a predetermined sequence. When the package supply means is positioned above the position where packaging and packing are conducted, the bag-holding means is positioned under the package supply means while the bats are kept open, and an empty carton is positioned under the bag-holding means, the bobbin arresters descend for a predetermined distance, the empty carton ascends for predetermined distance by means of the lift table and the packages are freed from the hold of the bobbin arrestors during which time the degree of vacuum of the bag-holding bars becomes zero to drop the packages while enclosed in the bags to bottom of the carton. Thus packaging and encasing of the packages are conducted at the same time.
One embodiment of the apparatus for automatically packaging and encasing yarn package of the present invention will be described below with reference to the accompanying drawings.
FIG. 1 is a front view of a package of yarn wound on a bobbin.
FIG. 2 is a vertical sectional view of the package.
FIG. 3 is a perspective view of the apparatus of the present invention just prior to the operation.
FIG. 4 is a perspective view of the apparatus of the present invention during the packaging and encasing operations.
FIG. 5 is a perspective view of package supply means.
FIGS. 6 and 7 are a perspective view and a plan view of bag-holding means.
FIG. 8 shows a lift table.
FIG. 9 is a plan view illustrating mechanism for feeding cartons one by one to the lift table.
FIGS. 10, 11 and 12 are diagrams illustrating packaging and encasing of yarn packages by the process.
FIG. 13 is a diagram illustrating a sequence of packaging and encasing operations.
FIG. 14 is a view showing the positioning of packages clamped with bobbin arrestors relative to the bags.
FIGS. 15, 16 and 17 are views illustrating one embodiment of bag-holding bars.
FIG. 18 is a diagram showing the movements of the bag holding bars.
In FIGS. 1 and 2, numeral 1 is a bobbin comprising a hollow metal (as aluminum) tube and yarn is wound on it to form yarn layers 2. The wound arrangement of yarn 2 such as found on the bobbin 1 is referred to as a package. Both ends of the bobbin 1 protrudes an appropriate length (about 20 to 44 mm) from the yarn layers 2. As described below, the bobbin arrester clamps this portion of a bobbin.
FIGS. 3 and 4 are perspective views illustrating one embodiment of the packaging and encasing apparatus according to the present invention. Some packages 3 are placed on a pallet 4 (three packages in the drawings) and delivered to a turn table 6 from the prior process with a roller conveyor 5. In the drawings, the pallet 4 is being placed one by one on the turn table 6 but two or more pallets may be placed. In this case bobbin arrestors 11 should be arranged in two or more rows.
The turn table 6 rotates inermittently through 90 degrees per each turn and the packages are arrested with the bobbin arresters 11 in a position 7 arrest. The emptied pallet is discharged to a roller conveyor 8.
Package supply means is shown in FIGS. 3, 4 and 5. In the drawings, the bobbin arresters 11 are secured on a support plate 12 and three bobbin arresters are arranged in a row. But six bobbin arresters in two rows may be arranged. The support plate 12 is linked to a piston rod 14a of an air cylinder 14 mounted on the shifter plate 13 and vertically moved with the air cylinder 14. The shifter plate 13 is provided with wheels 15, which roll on rails 17. The shifter plate 13 is linked to a piston rod 19a of an air cylinder 19 and runs horizontally along the rails 17.
A bag manufacturing machine 20 is shown in FIG. 3. Tubular film 21 folded and wounded on a drum 22 is discharged from film supply rollers 22 at a constant speed. High-speed rollers 23 intermittently driven synchronously with the movement of the bag-holding bar 50 feed film 21 having a given length with one end open and the other end sealed between the bag-holding bars 50, 50'. A heat sealer 24 is positioned such that it seals the film 21 just above the location where it will be cut with a cutter 25. While the rollers 23 stands still, the film 21 is maintained under tension with a dancer roller 26.
Bag-holding means 30 are given in FIGS. 3, 6 and 7. A bedplate 33 is placed on rails 31 by means of wheels 32. Two shafts 34 are supported with brackets 35 secured on the bedplate 33 and slidably pass through the bag-holding bars 50, 50'. The bag-holding bars 50, 50' have inlet ports 51, 51' on their inner sides. The insides of the bars 50, 50' are linked to vacuum mechanism (FIG. 16.) through a vacuum hose. The inside structure of the bag-holding bars 50, 50' will be discussed later. The bedplate 33 is linked to a rod 36a of a statiinary air cylinder 36 at one edge 33a of the bedplate 33.
In FIGS. 6 and 7 is shown one example of a driving mechanism for bag-holding bar 50. A lever 37 is journaled rotatably in a level surface on a pin 40 (FIG. 7) secured to the bedplate and positioned halfway between the bars 50, 50'. The lever 37 is provided with slits 41a, 41b and 41c, which are respectively engaged with a pin 43 mounted at the tip of a piston rod 42a of an air cylinder 42 and pins 52' and 52 mounted on the bottom of the bag-holding bars 50, 50'. The air cylinder 42 is secured on the bed-plate 33 by means of a bracket 44. With such a mechanism, the lever 37 rotates with center at the pin 40 according to the movement of piston rod 42a of the air cylinder 42 to cause the bag-holding bars 50, 50' to engage or disengage with or from each other.
As shown in FIG. 3, the film 21 sealed at the lower end, hanging between the bag-holding bars 50, 50' is held between the engated bag-holding bars 50, 50' with the inlet ports 51, 51' (FIG. 6) and cut just above the point of the holding with the cutter 25. By the disengagement of the bag-holding bars 50, 50' is opened a film bag 27.
Means 70 of shifting a carton is shown in FIGS. 3, 8 and 9. The means 70 of shifting a carton comprises a roller conveyor 71 on the supply side, a lift table 72 and a roller conveyor 73 on the discharge side. In FIG. 8 is illustrated the mechanism of the lift table 72. Rollers 76 connected so as to interlock each other with a chain 75 and guide rails 77 are mounted on a frame 74. The frame 74 is supported with racks 78 such that is moves up and down, the teeth of the racks 78 gearing with those of two pairs of pinions 79 engaging each other.
A piston rod 81 of an air cylinder 80 serves as a rack as well. The teeth of the rack gear with the teeth of the pinion 79b attached to the pinion shaft 79a to rotate the pinion 79b and four pinions 79 and thereby to move vertically the racks 78 or the frame 74.
When the lift table 72 is located in the lowest position, one of the rollers 76 is engaged with a driving roller 82 at its lower face and caused to rotate by the rotation of the roller 82. Since the roller 82 is arranged separately from the frame 74, the rollers 76 are detached from the foller 82 when the frame ascends. Thus the rollers 76 will not rotate. The lift table 72 is provided with stoppers 87a, 87b, 87c and 87d which are projected from between the rollers 76 and spaced apart from each other the same interval as one partition of the carton. However for simplicity in FIG. 8 only two stoppers 87a, 87b are disclosed.
One embodiment of mechanism for feeding cartons one by one onto a lift table is shown in FIG. 9. On a supply roller conveyor 71 are mounted stationary guards 84, 84' and 85, 85' positioned in stagger to each other and guards 86, 86' rendered transversely movable by means of an air cylinder 88. The length of the movable guards 86, 86' is almost the same as that of the carton. When a carton is present on the lift table 72, the guards 86, 86' are positioned as shown by the solid line and the carton stands still debarred with the stationary guards 85, 85'. When the lift table is emptied, the movable guards 86, 86' move to a position as shown by a dotted line to push only one carton to a position which is free from the stationary guards 85, 85'. As a result, the moving carton is conveyed onto the lift table and stops when it hits the stopper 87a movable up and down between the rollers.
With reference to FIGS. 3, 4, and 10 to 12, the operations of packaging and encasing the packages of yarn with the invention apparatus will be described below (FIG. 13 illustrates the timing of movement of each element of the apparatus.).
In FIG. 3, a pallet 4 loaded with packages of yarn 3 is sent to a position 7 where to pick up the packages with a turn table 6 during which time bobbin arresters 11 descend by the action of an air cylinder 14 to arrest the packages 3 and ascend. Then a shifter plate 13 advances (to the right in FIG. 3) by means of an air cylinder 19, and when it comes just above a lift table 72, strikes a limit switch B and stops.
In FIGS. 3 and 6, bag-holding bars 50, 50' hold bags 27 between them and open them by means of an air cylinder 42 and the bedplate 33 is caused to advance to left (in the drawing) by means of an air cylinder 36. When the bedplate 33 comes under the bobbin arresters 11 and just above the lift table, it strikes the limit switch L and stops.
A carton 83, as described above with reference to FIG. 9, is fed to the lift table 72 and strikes a limit switch Q1. When limit switches B, L and Q1 all generate signals, the following actions are started as shown in FIGS. 4 and 10 to 12. The bobbin arresters 11 starts to descend together with the support plate 12 by means of an air cylinder 14, and at the same the lift table 72 starts to ascend. During the time the bag-holding bars 50, 50' stand still and hold the bags 27 opened. When the packages descend for a predetermined distance, slightly above the bottom of the bags, the limit switch D generates a signal and the bobbin arresters discontinue to fall. When the lift table 72 ascends for a predetermined distance until the bottom of the carton 83 is slightly spaced apart from the bottom of the bags 27, the limit switch S generates a signal to stop the ascending of the lift table 72.
When the limit switches D and S generate signals, the bobbin arresters 11 release the packages 3 and start to ascend, and the shifter plate 13 starts to retreat. At the same time, the degree of vacuum inside the bag-holding bars 50, 50' becomes zero, and the bedplate 33 begins to retreat. The packages 3 falls to the bottom of the carton together with the bags 27 by gravity to consummate packaging and encasing at a time. By the signals of the limit switches D and S, the lift table 72 starts to descend.
When the lift table 72 returns to the lowest position, the rollers 76 come into contact with the driving roller 82 and start to rotate. Then the first stopper 87a falls and the carton advances and the positioning of it is determined with the stopper 87b to cause a limit switch Q2 (FIG. 3) to generate a signal. In this way the carton is shifted by the amount of one partition to receive the packages into the next partition. In the carton as shown in FIG. 4, positions of the carton are changed four times to receive packages in turn. (However for simplicity in FIG. 8, only two stoppers are disclosed.) And if the support plate 12 of the package supply means 10 is provided with bobbin arresters in two rows, one shifting of the position of the carton will suffice. In this case, the two rows of the bobbin arresters are preferably arranged so as to have the distance too times one partition of the carton lest the adjacent packages rub each other.
Instead of shifting the carton, it is possible to provide mechanism for moving the package supply means 10 and the bag-holding means 30. After all the partitions are filled with the packages, the carton 83 as sent to the roller conveyor 73.
Such is the control system of the package supply means, the bag-holding means and the means of shifting cartons, but since a practical control mechanism is a combination of conventional electric circuits and can easily be arrived at by one skilled in the art, the present invention should not be understood as including the novelty of such a control mechanism.
In the automatic packaging and packing with the use of bags of conventional size in the manual operations, there have frequently occurred troubles that the bags are disengaged from the bag-holding bars 50, 50' before the packages are fully enclosed in the bags. The reason is that a conventional bag slightly greater in circumference than the package makes a rectangle the shorter sides of which become smaller than the diameter of the package as illustrated in FIG. 14(c). Hence in the automatic pachaging and packing apparatus, the bags of greater size as shown in FIG. 14 (c) should be used. In this case the interval "d" between the bags depends upon the bag manufacturing machine 20 and cannot be very small lest they over lap each other over the bag-holding bar 50. In short, the gauge P' of the packages becomes greater. In its turn, a carton should disadvantageously have a greater size than conventional cartons under the manual operation.
For this reason a device has been proposed for increasing high reliability in the packaging operation with the use of bags of greater size and cartons of the same size as in the manual operation. That is, in FIG. 11, the middle one 11a of the three bobbin arrestors 11 is secured on the support plate 12 and the other two 11b are engaged with small air cylinders 16, secured on the support plate 12, which are capable of moving the bobbin arrestors 11b horizontally and thereby altering the interval between the bobbin arresters 11a and 11b. At the start of the packaging operation, the initial interval between the bobbin arrestors 11a and 11b is p' as shown in FIG. 14 (c) by the dotted lines in FIG. 11. After by the fall of the bobbin arresters 11, the lower ends of the packages 3 have been enclosed in the bags held with the bag-holding bars 50, 50', the air cylinders 16 work to attract the bobbin arresters 11b at both ends into the center and reduce the interval between the bobbin arresters 11a and 11b, that is, the interval between the packages 3 (positioned as shown by the solid lines). Thus the packages 3 can be stored in the carton of the same size as conventional ones.
The mechanism of the bag-holding means 30 is described referring to FIGS. 15, 16 and 17. In conventional bag-holding means, the interior of each of the bag-holding bars 50, 50' forms single hollow vacuum chambers 53, 53' as shown in FIG. 15. The vacuum chambers 53, 53' are connected with a vacuum pump 55 with a flexible tube 54. However with such a bag-holding means, the bags have defectively been opened because some bags are found difficult to open under the influence of their material, manufacturing conditions, ambient temperatures or humidity. That is, such a defective bag 27a is not sufficiently sucked to the bag-holding bar 50', and a small gap occurs between an inlet port 51' and the bag 27a. Thus air flows in from the inlet port 51'. Though the flow rate is very low, the pressure of the vacuum chamber 53' gradually rises and approaches atmospheric pressure unless the gap disappears in a short time to cause other bags to be disengaged from the bag-holding bar 50'.
In promoting operational efficiency, it will suffice, therefore, to provide an inlet port corresponding to each bag and to prevent one defective opening from affecting other bags. But each chamber should be connected with each vacuum hose, resulting in the provision of bulky bag-holding means and the complicated operations of the means. On the other hand the increase of capacity of the vacuum pump is one way but is is undesirable in view of installation cost and space.
In FIGS. 16 and 17, numerals 56, 56' indicate secondary vacuum chambers independent of each other. The secondary vacuum chambers each have inlet ports 51, 51' in an appropriate number. Numerals 57, 57' are primary vacuum chambers connecting with the secondary vacuum chambers. One end of each primary vacuum chamber is connected with a vacuum pump 55 by means of flexible tube 54 and a hose 58. Numerals 59, 59' are resistors to control the flowing of air which may be small copper tubes, orifices or any other appropriate matirials to control air flow.
In this device the fact that any bag is disengaged from inlet ports and inlet ports become open will not affect other secondary vacuum chambers by the presence of the resistors 59, 59'. Further the vacuum capacity of the whole bag-holding means are increased with the provision of the primary vacuum chambers 57, 57'. Therefore the degree of vacuum is maintained satisfactorily to attract instantly a bag disengaged from inlet parts and to widely increase efficiency of the bag opening.
A pressure gauge P for detecting pressure in the vacuum chambers may be provided. The pressure gauge P generates a signal to discontinue the packaging operation when the pressure in the vacuum chambers exceeds a predetermined amount of pressure.
Further in order that the bag opening operation may be more accurate, it is effective to move the bag-holding bars 50, 50' stepwise, not at a stretch, that is, to narrow the interval between the bars after they have been extended to a certain extent and then increase it.
The above steps will be described with reference to FIGS. 6 and 18.
FIG. 18 is a diagram is which the interval X between the bag-holding bars 50, 50' and the advancing distance y of the bedplate 33 is plotted as ordinate and time as abscissa. Under the conditions where the bag-holding bars are engaged with each other holding bags, the bedplate 33 starts to advance. When the bedplate 33 advances for a distance y, a limit switch I generates a signal I and starts to extend the interval between the bars 50, 50' by means of an air cylinder 42. When the interval between the bag-holding bars reaches a predetermined valueXo, a limit switch J generates a signal J and causes the bars 50, 50' to start to be engaged with each other. Then when the bedplate 33 and advances for a distance Y2, a limit switch K generates a signal K to start disengaging one bar from the other. The signal K is arranged in such a way to cancel the signal J of the limit switch J and to cause the bars to be fully disengaged from each other.
A timer may be used instead of a limit switch.