Patent GB-489432-A (GB)
Title: Improvements relating to sorting or distributing apparatus
IPC: B07C3/08
Filed: 1937-01-26
Abstract: 489,432. Sorting parcels ; endless - chain conveyers. SOVEX, Ltd., and CADMAN, H. W. Jan. 26, 1937, No. 2286. [Class 78 (i)] A parcel-sorting system comprises one or more constantly moving endless conveyers 1 passing beneath a sorting station 4 and delivering to a predetermined one of a number of transverse endless conveyers 5<1> ..... 5<12>. Each conveyer 1 comprises pockets formed by flaps 64, 65, Fig. 3, pivoted between side chains 2 and normally latched together to form the floor of the pocket. The sorting station is generally on a higher floor than the conveyers and a parcel is passed through flap-doors 7 and down a shoot 8 into a pocket of the main conveyer. Push-buttons 11 are provided a the sorting station corresponding in number to the number of transverse conveyers and each button, except one, is in the circuit of one of a number of solenoids 55<1> .... 55<11>, one solenoid being arranged over each transverse conveyer except the last, so that depression of any particular button energizes one solenoid to select which transverse convever is to receive the parcel. A further solenoid 25 is arranged in a circuit containing the solenoids 55 and all the push-buttons ; energization of this solenoid partly releases a linkage 21, 22, 23. The linkage is completely released by movement of the conveyer itself, which ensures that the flap doors 7 cannot be opened to allow a parcel into the shoot 8 except when the conveyer is in such position as ensures that a pocket will be in position to receive a parcel falling from the shoot. This latter condition is fulfilled by rollers 12 carried by the side chains 2 actuating cams 13 which are mechanically connected to the linkage 21, 22, 23. A flexible flap 26 normally obstructs the mouth of the shoot to break the fall of the parcel, but is drawn aside at the proper time by a linkage operated by a second cam 35 actuated by the rollers 12. Energization of a solenoid 55 projects a pin 38 axially through a disc 37, Fig. 6, which is intermittently rotated by a pawl-and-ratchet mechanism, being advanced one step for the passage of each pocket of the main conveyer over a lever 44 associated with the pawl and rocked by the main conveyer. The disc is rotated through the angular distance 56 (that is to say from the point at which the pin 38 was projected to the point at which the pin contacts with a lever 52) in the same time that the pocket, containing the parcel which was deposited therein on actuation of the button 11 which energized the solenoid 55 in question, travels from the sorting station to the transverse conveyer. Contact of the pin 38 with the lever 52 swings this lever clockwise so that it projects into the path of the flap unlatching means 66, 67 of the pocket in question just as such pocket arrives over the transverse conveyer, so that the parcel is thereupon deposited on the predetermined conveyer 5. A permanently projected lever 72, corresponding to lever 52, is provided over the twelfth transverse conveyer which is not provided with solenoid-actuated mechanism, so that all parcels not delivered to one of the conveyers 5<1> ... 5<11> is necessarily deposited on the twelfth. The flaps of the main conveyer are automatically relatched, partly by ramps 73 and partly by gravity, during their passage round the pulley 3 to the return flight.