Patent ID: 8172072

Claim:
A crucible feeder mechanism used in an elementary analysis device for heating a sample accommodated in a crucible, thereby extracting and analyzing an element contained in the sample as a gas component, comprising: an inclined mount surface on which a plurality of crucibles are mounted in parallel; a guide member having an outlet port formed downward of an inclination direction of the mount surface, and guiding one of the crucibles sliding down the mount surface by an empty weight of the crucible toward the outlet port; and a crucible moving mechanism provided to interpose between the outlet port of the guide member and a feed port for feeding the crucibles, and moving one of the crucibles sliding down to the outlet port to the feed port, wherein the crucible moving mechanism includes a crucible moving body provided at the outlet port of the guide member, having an accommodation concave portion for accommodating therein one of the crucibles sliding down the mount surface, formed on a circumferential surface portion of the crucible moving body; and a driving part driving the crucible moving body to move between an accommodation position at which the accommodation concave portion receives and accommodates therein one of the crucibles sliding down and a feed position at which the accommodation concave portion communicates with the feed port and the crucible accommodated in the accommodation concave portion is dropped into the feed port, wherein the inclined mount surface, the guide member and the crucible moving body are configured to be operatively detachable from the driving part.