Packing machine with bag-supporting device

Claim 1

A packing machine for filling and sealing a series of bags comprising a pair of intermittently operated pinching rollers for intermittently transferring a strip-like bag material of a collapsed plastics film strip, a stationary heat-sealer, a movable heat-sealer arranged to move toward and away from said stationary heat-sealer in a horizontal plane to seal the tops of said bags, a guide plate provided under said stationary heat-sealer at a front portion of the machine for guiding a leading bag section formed in said bag material and having a transversely extending opening portion thereof, said guide plate having along a front face a plurality of vertically extending parallel slits, a supporting device for supporting the leading bag section, said supporting device being provided on a rear side of said guide plate and arranged to be capable of being raised and lowered therealong and comprising a comblike supporting member having a pectination projecting frontwardly of said guide plate through said slits thereof and arranged to be swung about a horizontal axis so as to be capable of upholding a bottom of the leading bag section with said pectination when said supporting member is swung upwardly, said pectination being normally biased obliquely downwardly by means of a spring, a reciprocating crank mechanism operatively connected to said movable heat-sealer for sequentially operating operative parts of the machine and said movable heat-sealer, said reciprocating crank mechanism being drivingly connected to said supporting member by means of a flexible pulling member so that said supporting member can be swung upwardly about said horizontal axis against the action of said spring as said flexible pulling member is pulled by said crank mechanism, means for operatively connecting said reciprocating crank mechanism and said movable heat-sealer such that said crank mechanism pulls said flexible pulling member to cause said supporting member to be upwardly swung immediately before said movable heat-sealer is moved toward said stationary heat-sealer and after the filling operation to raise at least a portion of said top of said bag relative to said heat sealers to a proper sealing position.