Patent GB-750117-A (GB)
Title: Improvements in installations for producing wood veneer
IPC: B27L5/00
Filed: 1954-02-24
Abstract: 750,117. Sheet delivery apparatus. VIGNON, F. Feb. 24, 1954 [Feb. 27, 1953; Jan. 9, 1954; Feb. 2, 1954], No. 5441/54. Class 100 (1). [Also in Groups XIII, XXII, XXIII and XXX] Wood veneer sheets, cut by a reciprocating-cutter or -work machine or by a lathe and guillotine (see Group XXII), are conveyed to a drier (see Group XIII) between pairs of endless belts driven by the same means as the cutting machine The sheets may be dried in hot-air or other driers having rollers or moving belts or carriages or in the rotary drier shown in Fig. 1 by hot air circulating in an assembly formed by jackets J and J<SP>1</SP> and side discs K keyed to a shaft 14. Radial screens F are hinged to the drier at their inner ends 15 and at their outer ends have spring-loaded pins 50 engaging a chain 51. Sprockets 52 and 60 on a shaft 53 drive the chain 51 and a chain 59 for rotating the drier, the sprocket 52 being smaller so that the angular speed of the pins 50 is slightly less than that of the hinges 15, thus causing the screens, after a complete revolution, to leave a free space L for loading the veneer sheets. The belts 81, 8<SP>1</SP>a of the conveyer system, as they retract from the space L, deposit sheets on a screen 16 and, as they leave the space, a lever system 17, 17a, 17b, 17c connected to the reciprocating carriage for the cutting blade moves a pair of pusher members 18, 18a, first to engage under the screen 16 and under a succeeding screen 20 and then raise the two screens. The pin 50 of the screen 16 is retracted by a guide 58 before being released to engage the chain 51, and the screen 16 then encloses the veneer sheets between it and the preceding screen, ready for passage through the drier. The screen 20, in rising, releases sheets that have passed through the drier and they slide between endless belts 22 by which they are conveyed to a collecting point; the screen 20 is held in the raised position previously occupied by the screen 16 by means of a spring catch. For conveying the sheets from the reciprocating cutter carriage to the rotary drier, a conveyer belt system B is mounted on the carriage to reciprocate with it and comprises a number of pairs of rubber or rubber-faced belts 8, 8a and 8<SP>1</SP>, 8<SP>1</SP> a  driven by long intergeared pulleys 5, 5a and passing over guide pulleys 6 and 7. The pulleys 5, 5a are driven by a weighted chain anchored at one end to a fixed point and passing over a sprocket that has a one-way drive connection with one pulley. As the cutter blade is oblique to the direction of reciprocation of the carriage, the sheets come off at an angle but are righted between the belts 8, 8a by a guide that is increasingly curved towards the side where the blade is most advanced and causes the pairs of belts towards that side to describe longer paths. Close to the drier, the framework for the belts 8<SP>1</SP>, 8<SP>1</SP>a is supported by a roller H running on a rail I inclined at the same angle as the screen F which is to receive the sheets. After passing through the drier, the sheets are conveyed to a collecting point by belts 22. For conveying sheets from a cutting machine with a fixed cutter carriage, a system having three sets of pairs of belts, Fig. 17, is used and the b Itdriving pulleys are driven continuously by gearing from a shaft 73 or intermittently by means of weighted chain 69, one-way drive 61a and cam 72. If crank means A<SP>2</SP> are used for reciprocating the billet D, the speed of cutting is not uniform and the cam 72 is profiled to give the same non-uniform speed to the belts. The delivery end 67 of the belts is reciprocated into and out of the drier by a cam 75 engaging a weight-loaded lever 31 connected to the supporting framework for the belts; if several sheets are to be spread on a single drying screen, the cam 75 may be intermittently rotated by interposing a clutch between it and the driveshaft 73 controlling the clutch from the billet reciprocating means. The supporting roller H<SP>1</SP> rests on a rail I<SP>1</SP> that is curved in order to keep the movement of the delivery end substantially linear although the framework F<SP>0</SP>, F<SP>2</SP> moves through an arc. Continuous sheets from a veneer-cutting lathe are fed by a single belt to a guillotine and the cut sheets are then fed by a second single belt to the two-belt conveyer system; the second belt runs at twice the speed of the first belt in order to space the sheets and a change-speed device may be provided in the drive to the conveyer system so that it can be synchronized to take sheets of different widths. For feeding sheets to drier belts arranged in tiers, a supporting rail for the delivery end of the conveyer belts may be raised in stages by a cam intermittently rotated by a clutch con-, trolled by tappets that are operated each time the delivery end withdraws from the drier.