Patent ID: 7757465

Claim:
An apparatus for filling an empty shaft tray with rod-shaped products, the shaft tray having shaft walls extending from a bottom wall of the shaft tray which form a plurality of shafts, the apparatus comprising: a filling hopper having a receiving region for a mass flow composed of the products, and a storage region for products comprising a front wall, a rear wall, side walls and a bottom wall, wherein the storage region includes partitions that form a plurality of filling shafts adjacent to each other, wherein the partitions substantially extend over a full height of the storage region, wherein adjacent partitions of two filling shafts of the storage region are spaced apart to form a receiving chamber to receive a respective one the shaft walls of the shaft tray, wherein the rear wall of the storage region includes openings for passage of the shaft walls of the shaft tray, and wherein the openings in the rear wall of the storage region are vertically extending slots having a width slightly larger than a width of the shaft walls; a delivery element to deliver the empty shaft tray into the receiving region of the filling hopper to be filled with the products; and a removal element to remove a filled shaft tray from the filling hopper.