Vertical bottom-fill auger assembly

Claim 1

A vertical bottom-fill auger assembly for use in deaerating a product and filling a target weight of said product into a gab, said bag having an open top and a closed bottom, said vertical bottom-fill auger assembly comprising: a frame assembly; a bottom-fill auger assembly, said bottom-fill auger assembly being connected to and supported by said frame assembly, said bottom-fill auger assembly including an auger hopper having an open bottom and a fill tube depending from and connected to said auger hopper and communicating with said open bottom, said fill tube having a length and a bottom end, said fill tube having a spout assembly connected thereto adjacent said bottom end, said bottom-fill auger assembly further including an auger shaft having a section of flighting, said auger shaft having an axis of rotation oriented in a generally vertical direction, said auger shaft extending downwardly within said auger hopper and being received within said fill tube such that said section of flighting extends substantially through said length of said fill tube and terminating proximate to said bottom end, said section of flighting compressing and de-aerating the product within said fill tube to maintain a generally uniform product density as the product is discharged from said bottom end of said fill tube; an auger shaft drive means, said auger shaft drive means being connected to said auger shaft and capable of controllably rotating said auger shaft and said section of flighting in a predetermined direction at a selected rate of revolution about said axis of rotation, rotation of said flighting discharging the product from said fill tube into the bag during a selected interval, the product filled into the bag during said selected interval defining a product level generally adjacent to the top of the product filled into the bag, said product level at a particular time during said selected interval being related to a number of revolutions of said auger shaft prior to said particular time by a mathematical function; a bag handling assembly, said bag handling assembly including a bag gripping mechanism for gripping the bag while the bag is being filled with product; a bag elevator assembly, said bag elevator assembly being connected to said bag gripping mechanism and movable along a vertical path relative to said fill tube such that the bag may be raised to the extended position whereat the fill tube is received through the open top of the bag and the bottom end of the fill tube is proximate to the closed bottom of the bag; means for counting said number of revolutions of said auger shaft occurring prior to said particular time during said selected interval; means for comparing said number of revolutions of said auger shaft prior to said particular time with said mathematical function to obtain an estimated product level; and means for controllably lowering said bag elevator assembly from said extended position to said retracted position during said selected interval responsive to said estimated product level; whereby the means for controllably lowering the bag elevator assembly responsively lowers the bag from the extended position to the retracted position during the selected interval in response to the estimated product level determined by comparing the number of revolutions of the auger shaft during the selected interval with the mathematical function such that the bottom end of the fill tube is disposed closely proximately to the product level throughout the selected interval during which the product is being filled into the bag.