Patent ID: 7114609

Claim:
An infeed apparatus for a machine for wrapping products comprising: a plurality of metering conveyors for a advancing products along a plurality of product infeed lanes, at least one of the metering conveyors being driven independently of the others whereby said one conveyor can advance product along one of the infeed lanes independently of product in the other infeed lanes, an accelerator conveyor for advancing product along said infeed lanes from the metering conveyors at a speed which is faster than the speed of the metering conveyors, a diverter frame, and a plurality of diverter gates mounted on the diverter frame, each of the diverting gates having an infeed end for receiving product from one of said infeed lanes and a discharge end for delivering product to a product output lane, the infeed end of at least the diverting gate which is associated with said one infeed lane being pivotally mounted on the diverter frame whereby the discharge end of the pivotally mounted diverting gate can selectively deliver product to more than one product output lane and the number of output lanes is greater than the number of infeed lanes.