Patent ID: 7249670

Claim:
A balanced work transport system for moving articles in transport carriages through different processing stages, and having the capacity for providing for a dwell time in one processing stage different from the dwell time in another processing stage, said system comprising: an elongate article transport guide for guiding transport carriages, in a substantially linear direction along a given motion path, from a starting point to an ending point, said guide having at least a first portion and a second portion; a plurality of transport carriages, each carriage bearing a plurality of articles, and each being displaceably coupled for displacement along said transport guide, said transport carriages being characterized by a given X dimension and a given Y dimension, said X and Y dimensions extending at a non-linear angle to each other; coupling apparatus for displaceably coupling said transport carriages to said article transport guide, so that said transport carriages are reorientable from a first carriage position in which said X dimension is substantially parallel to an adjacent portion of said transport guide, to a second carriage position in which said Y dimension is substantially parallel to an adjacent portion of said transport guide; and orientation-changing apparatus positioned at a predetermined first orientation-changing position along said given motion path, to reorient said transport carriages from one of said first and second carriage positions to the other of said first and second carriage positions; said X and Y dimensions being significantly different from each other such that said transport carriages when disposed in side-by-side relationship along said transport guide occupy a significantly greater length of said guide when oriented in one of said first and second carriage positions than when oriented in the other of said first and second carriage positions.