Patent ID: 7174693

Claim:
An article portioning system which portions discrete articles, comprising: an article counting head housing comprising a chamber through which articles pass between a chamber inlet and a chamber outlet; an article detecting unit which detects articles passing between the chamber inlet and chamber outlet, said detecting unit generating signals corresponding to characteristics of the articles passing through the detecting unit, wherein the characteristics include at least one of a count of articles and a predetermined range of a predetermined specification; a divider which divides at least a portion of the chamber vertically into two adjacent article flow channels; an upper diverting gate coupled to a first gate repositioning device; a lower outlet gate coupled to a second gate repositioning device; and a controller, wherein the article detecting unit is located above the upper diverting gate, and the detecting unit generates at least a portion complete signal when a predetermined portion of articles has entered the detecting unit and an out-of-specification signal when the detecting unit detects a characteristic which falls outside the predetermined range, the upper diverting gate is located adjacent to an upper end of the divider, and is arranged to be positioned by the first gate repositioning device at least in a position which blocks article flow into a first of the two channels and a position which blocks article flow into a second of the two channels, the lower outlet gate located adjacent to a lower end of the divider, and is arranged to be positioned by the second gate repositioning device at least in a position which blocks article flow out of the first channel and a position which blocks article flow out of the second channel, the controller is programmed to command the first gate repositioning device to reposition the upper diverting gate in response to receipt from the detecting unit of at least one of a portion complete signal and an out-of-specification signal, such that article flow through the chamber is diverted from one of the two channels to the other of the two channels, and to command the second gate repositioning device to reposition the lower outlet gate to block the flow of articles out of a channel when an article receiving container is not present beneath the chamber outlet.