Apparatus for conveying upright standing containers and rejecting abnormal containers

Claim 1

In apparatus for conveying upright standing containers on a curved path, said apparatus including a driven star wheel which advances containers in spaced relation along said path, said apparatus having a transfer point at the beginning of the curved path where containers are fed into the star wheel and a second transfer point at the end of the curved path where normal containers are discharged from the star wheel, the improvement for rejecting abnormal containers laterally from the star wheel intermediate said transfer points and comprising a curved support rail on which the container rests and a curved guide rail spaced above the level of the said curved support rail to form in a spacing between the guide and support rails and intermediate said transfer points an abnormal container rejecting gap, said gap being longer than the container diameter and higher than the abnormal container, said rails being substantially concentric to the star wheel, said guide rail being disposed outside the path of that part of the container which bears against it by centrifugal force, whereby abnormal containers of a height less than said spacing will be rejected by centrifugal force through said gap.