DEVICE FOR TRANSFERRING AND SIMULTANEOUSLY TILTING ARTICLES

Abstract: A device for transferring and contemporaneously tilting articles, in particular of small size and flat shape, e.g. to be processed on both upper and lower face, comprises a cylindr­ ical body controlled for rotating about its axis by an actuator and provided with a plurality of radial grooves, equally dis­ tributed along its periphery for housing the piece to be trans­ ferred. A known pushing means is provided to bring the piece to be transferred from a first position to one of said grooves of the cylinrical body and, upon a number of elementary rota­ tions of the latter corresponding to a half of the total number ­ of grooves, whereby the same groove is rotated by an overall angle of 180°, therefrom to the second desired position, which may be or not on the same resting surface of the first position. Between each elementary rotation and the subse­ quent one the cylindrical body accomplishes a stop during which the two pushing actions are carried out at the same time.

Description: The present invention is directed to a device for transferring and tilting articles, in particular of small size, possibly for being processed on two opposite faces. It is known that generally in an automatic system it is often necessary to transfer an article, such as a piece to be worked, from a line of production to another or from a machine to another with contemporaneous tilting of the article itself. To this effect various types of apparatus are used, from the simplest mechanical arms to the most sophisticated robot-like equipments. These known devices are however used in handling articles with a size which is not too small and thereby can be catched as suitably as possible for their lifting, rotation until their tilting, and final positioning on the receiving surface, where frequently the articles have to be further processed on a face therof which is opposite to the one processed at the initial position, even though these movements can be required also in different cases and situations. For example from FR-A-1345498 a rotating device is already known for transferring longitudinally extended and heavy products such as metal bars, billets, blooms and plates, not particularly for the tilting thereof, but mainly for some further treatment (cooling, quencing, pickling) in a pit under the transfer plane. This requires that each workpiece is caused to lower during the transfer, by e.g. a rotation of the device in the counter clockwise direction when moving from left to the right and viceversa (clockwise direction for a feed movement from the right to the left). In handling small articles the technique does not offer at present any efficient means but simple pushers, such as when feeding pieces in the minting of coins, and in practice it is impossible to transfer and tilt in a quick sequence small items, especially if the small size is shown by the side provided for their clamping. In this case, particularly if this side is also shaped so as to render difficult its taking, when it is for example with tapered walls, magnetically or vacuum-actuated equipments for lifting articles would be in practice useless, since sidely clamping devices would be however necessary for the tilting action. A solution such as represented diagrammatically on Fig. 1 of the drawings could be provided, wherein an arm is formed with a recess for housing a piece 1 being pushed by a known means, and thereafter, upon a rotation of 180°, reaches the position shown in phantom lines thus allowing piece 1 to be positioned in B, upon another operation of known pushing means. However such a solution is not satisfactory for its inherent slowness, due to the unavoidable idle time periods during which the arm carries out these rotations of 180°. The object of the present invention is to provide an apparatus which does not show the above-mentioned drawbacks by performing the transfer and contemporaneous tilting of the articles from a first position to a second position so that on the latter each article rests with the surface opposed to the initial base surface, the apparatus comprising known pushing means and rotating means for a rotation between said two positions, said rotating means including a cylindrical body rotatably mounted on an axis substantially co-planar with the support plane defined by said two positions, said cylindrical body being forward with a plurality of n peripheral grooves (n being an even number), each of them being arranged to house one of the articles to be transferred and tilted, in such a manner not to cause idle time periods and bottleneck chokes in a high-speed automatic line. This is obtained by means of the fact that said axis is controlled by an actuating means to carry out successively elementary rotations by an angle of 360°: n each time in the clockwise direction for a transfer from left to the right and counterclockwise from the right to the left; between two successive elementary rotations there being provided a period of time in which said cylindrical body is stationary and during which an article is fed from said first position into one of said n grooves by said pushing means and at the same time another article is discharged from the diametrally opposite groove toward said second position. According to a preferred embodiment of the present invention, the above-mentioned cylindrical body is partially housed in a free space defined between said two positions, with said pushing means being operated in a radial direction with respect to the said axis, which is centrally positioned between the first and the second position. According to another embodiment of the invention said first and second positions are both provided on one uninterrupted supporting surface which in a first instance is made of a linear conveyor and in a second instance corresponds to a single turntable with the said cylindrical body being mounted next to said surface, having a diametral plane thereof flush with the latter and at a minimum distance therefrom, said grooves being charged and discharged in a direction parallel to the axis of said cylindrical body. Further objects, advantages and features of the device according to the invention will be more clearly apparent from the following detailed description of some embodiments thereof,'given by way of non-limiting example with reference to the annexed drawings, wherein: FIGURE 1 schematically shows a possible embodiment with rotating arm, already mentioned and not being a part of the present invention; FIGURE 2 shows a diagrammatic front view of one embodiment of the device according to the invention; FIGURE 3 shows a graph of the timing diagram for the device of Fig. 2; FIGURES 4, 4a respectively show a front view and a plant view from above, both diagrammatic, of a second embodiment of the invention itself, associated with a linear conveyor; and FIGURES 5, 5a show views respectively similar to Figs. 4, 4a and related to a turntable. In the drawings the article to be transferred and tilted, designated 1, has been represented by way of example as a truncated pyramid with square base having a substantially flat shape, i.e. with a minimum size in height, so as to cause difficulties when clamped laterally by a known means. The first, starting position of article 1 is always indicated as A, and the second, receiving or final position is indicated as B. The possible embodiment with rotating arm, shown in Fig. 1 and not being part of the present invention has already been discussed above. Referring now to Fig. 2, wherein an article 1 has to be transferred and at the same time tilted from position A to position B, between these two positions there is mounted the rotation axis X of a cylindrical body 10 the diameter of which covers substantially almost the whole minimum distance between said two positions A and B, except for a small clearance. On the cylindrical body 10 there is provided a plurality of radial grooves, here in number of eight, C₁-C₈ equally spaced along the periphery of body 10, each of them being arranged to receive one of said articles 1. According to the direction of arrows considered in Fig. 2 the article is pushed from the position A by a means well-known in the art into the groove C₁ being at that moment flush with such a position. The cylindrical body 10 rotates as it is mounted on the axis of an actuator (not shown), so as to accomplish each time a rotation of 360°/n, if n is the number of grooves C₁-C n . After a n/2 number of these elementary rotations, between each two of which a stop interval is provided, as shown in the diagram of Fig. 3, the article 1 initially positioned in C₁ will assume the position initially occupied by C₅ upon a total rotation of 180°, and therefrom it will be pushed to the position B by a similar known means. However in the meantime another article 1 has been received respectively in the successive grooves C₂, C₃, C₄ and, when discharging from C₁, a fifth article is housed into C₅. The device then has a behaviour like a rotating magazine which, when in usual operation with all the grooves loaded, transfers one article in the desired way no longer at each rotation of 180° like in Fig. 1, but every 180° divided by n/2 (in this case 45° as n=8). If pieces 1 have to be worked, such as by grinding on both the major surfaces, positions A, B are respectively the mutually nearest peripheral zones of a first and a second turntable 3, 5 of a grinding machine (not shown). The transfer of the piece from a table to the other in practice occurs at the same time and with the shortest delay required therefor without the necessity of additional time for each rotation from position A to B. The only idle time period is provided during the first 180° rotation, until the n/2 grooves of a half cylinder are loaded, whereas with the solution of Fig. 1 this idle time period would be repeated during the whole operation. Thus it is possible to work at a very high speed and to transfer up to 120 articles every minute without any problem. According to another embodiment, shown in the subsequent figures, both initial and final positions A, B lie, spaced apart, on the same surface which in Figs. 4, 4a is that of a linear conveyor. In this embodiment the cylindrical body 10′ still has a number of radial grooves C which will be open sidely to allow loading and unloading of the articles 1 therefrom in a direction that is no longer radial as in Fig. 2, but parallel to the rotation axis X of the body 10′, as it is clearly shown in the plan view of Fig. 4a. Furthermore in this case the distance between two diametrally opposite grooves, which is again substantially the same as the distance between the positions A-B, will also correspond to the distance between the positions on the mobile support 11 occupied by two non successive articles 1 having an even number of said articles therebetween. Thus the article taken at A, upon a rotation of 180° for its tilting is caused to rest again on the support 11 at B being upstream of the initial position, as seen according to the arrow indicating the forward or feed direction of the conveyor 11, along which the tilted article moves again. It is like as on the conveyor 11 two alternate series of articles 1 were positioned which show opposite faces free upwards. In the case illustrated on Figs. 5, 5a the continuous surface on which the two positions A, B lie is provided by a worktable 12 for grinding or linishing, as if it comprised therein both the tables positioned in Fig. 2 on the right and left hand of the cylindrical body 10, now designated 20. As it is seen in Fig. 5 the table 12 has been represented with thicker or thinner zones, respectively alternate each other so as to support the articles 1 to be worked on the free face and respectively those already worked. As a matter of fact each piece will have to carry out two complete paths on the same table, before and after tilting. In general this solution could be preferred when the main problem is the space saving. Of course in this case, owing to the circular configuration of the mobile support 12, formed of a turntable, the front face of the cylindrical body 20 which is adjacent to the periphery of the table itself will show a concave arc shape, complementary to the circle arc between the two positions A and B. It should be appreciated that, in spite of the foregoing, the use of the device according to the invention is not meant to'be restricted to articles of small size, as it can be generally used with items to be transferred and tilted irrespective of their size. Possible additions and/or variations can be performed by those skilled in the art with respect to the above-described and illustrated embodiments of the device according to the invention without departing from the scope of the invention itself. In particular, in addition to the known suitable pushing means for loading and unloading the grooves, there will be provided synchronization means for the rotations of the cylindrical body 10, 10′ and its controlling actuator with the forward movements of the tables and conveyors 11 and in general the feed and discharge means for feeding articles 1 in A and discharging the same from position B. Furthermore each groove C could be provided with clamping means to hold article 1 during rotation, such a means being for example provided by a suitable shape of the groove or a real clamping means, such as of the spring type.

Claims: 1. A device for transferring and contemporaneously tilting articles (1) from a first position (A) to a second position (B) so that on the latter each article (1) rests with the surface opposed to the initial base surface in the first position (A), comprising known pushing means and rotating means for a rotation between said positions (A) and (B) , said rotating means including a cylindrical body (10, 10′, 20) rotatably mounted on an axis (X) substantially co-planar with the support plane defined by said first and second positions (A, B), said cylindrical body (10, 10′, 20) being formed with a plurality of peripheral grooves (C₁, C₂,....C n ) with n being an even number, each of them being arranged to house one of the articles (1) to be transferred and tilted, characterized by the fact that said axis (X) is controlled by an actuating means to carry out successively elementary rotations by an angle of 360°:n each time in the clockwise direction for a transfer from left to the right and counterclockwise from the right to the left; between two successive elementary rotations there being provided a period of time in which said cylindrical body is stationary and during which an article (1) is fed from said first position (A) into one of said grooves (C₁, ...C n ) by said pushing means and at the same time another article (1) is discharged from the diametrally opposite groove towards the position (B). 2. A device according to claim 1, wherein said fist and second positions (A, B) define therebetween a free space substantially covered, except for a minimum clearance, by said cylindrical body (10), characterized by the fact that said pushing means both for feeding and discharging articles (1) into or respectively from the related groove, operates in a radial direction with respect to the axis (X) positioned centrally between (A) and (B). 3. A device according to claim 1, wherein said first and second positions (A, B) are provided on one single continuous plane surface (11, 12), characterized by said cylindrical body (10′, 20) being positioned on one side of said surface, the distance between any two diametrally opposed grooves (C₁, ... C n ) thereof being the same as the distance between said first and second positions (A, B), with the action of said pushing means for feeding and discharging articles (1) from said grooves being directed parallel to said axis (X). 4. A device according to claim 3, wherein said first and second positions (A, B) are both provided on the surface of a linear conveyor (11) bearing a number of equally spaced articles (1) alternately resting with a surface and the opposite one, between said first and second positions (A, B) there being provided an even number of said articles (1). 5. A device according to claim 3, wherein said first and second positions (A, B) are both at the periphery of a turntable (12) having zones of alternately greater and lower thickness at the associated zones where articles (1) rest.

Inventors: VISCONTI, OTTO
Applicants: OFF.  MECCANICHE VIOTTO S.R.L.
Application year: 1987
Main classification: B65G47
IPC codes: B65G47