Patent ID: 6971838

Claim:
A feeder for removing porous battery plates having a predetermined plate thickness from a stack of plates and depositing them serially on an outfeed device for further processing, comprising: a pickup frame; a plurality of pickup heads carried by said pickup frame; each said pickup head having a pickup face with a pickup opening having a predetermined opening area defined therein, said pickup faces lying in a common plane; a vacuum source which provides a predetermined level of vacuum at said pickup openings; a collapsible device associated with each pickup head, the collapsible device being adapted to collapse by operation of a temporarily increased vacuum acting on the collapsible device to raise the pickup face of said pickup head; a feed mechanism comprising an infeed conveyor oriented at a conveyor angle with respect to the common plane of said pickup faces for simultaneously placing a stack of plates under each of said pickup heads with the top plate in each stack being separated from its respective pickup face by a gap which is within a predetermined range, said gap being generally the same for all of said pickup heads; a transport mechanism for moving said pickup frame between a pickup position where said pickup heads are above said stacks of plates and a deposit position where said pickup heads are above said outfeed device; a valve associated with said vacuum source which connects said vacuum source to said pickup heads when said pickup frame is moved to said pickup position and disconnects said vacuum source from said pickup heads when said pickup frame is moved to said deposit position; said gap is such that when said vacuum source is connected to said pickup heads and said pickup frame is in its pickup position the top plate in each stack will be lifted off of said stack and pulled into contact with the respective pickup face.