Equipment for handling rollable articles

Claim 1

Apparatus for delivering rollable articles, such as eggs, said apparatus including means for spacing and intermittently removing said articles and for delivering said articles to means further acting thereon, said spacing means including an automatic loader of the type having a rotating transport roller which transports individual articles in cavities in the roller, a feed conveyor having a receiving end for receiving the articles in random fashion and a delivery end for delivering articles to the cavities of the transporting roller, a plurality of vertical partitions extending in the direction of article transport so as to have upstream and downstream ends, said partitions being disposed above the delivery end of said conveyor and being horizontally spaced apart in side-by-side essentially parallel relationship to define a plurality of channels, each of which has a width such that only a single row of articles will be transported therethrough so that each channel delivers its respective row of articles to a given location on the transporting roller, means mounting each partition for pivotal movement about a separate vertical axis at its downstream end so that the upstream ends of the partitions are capable of performing a transverse reciprocating movement relative to said conveyor; means for imparting continuous reciprocating pivotal movement to said partitions such that the upstream ends of said partitions move through a small distance which is much less than the width of the channels thereby preventing jamming of the randomly disposed articles as they enter the channels; and means for preventing said roLlable articles from moving more than a small amount upwardly off said conveyor while they are temporarily retained at the delivery end of each channel before removal by said transport roller and without necessarily retarding forward movement thereof, said means comprising at least two resilient vertically adjustable hold-down elements arranged over the delivery end of each channel at different heights and each inclined downwardly in the direction of transport from a fixed end thereof, the upper one of said elements terminating in a free end beyond the free end of the lower one in the direction of transport, the free ends of said hold-down elements being horizontally spaced from each other in the direction of transport by a distance approximately equal to the average dimension of the articles to prevent an upward movement of an article.