Patent ID: 7448187

Claim:
A plant for producing and packaging tubes, each tube comprising a tubular body including at least a plastic film and a shoulder portion joined at one end with a threaded neck and an attached closure cap, said plant comprising: (a) a packaging station; (b) a conveyor belt for supplying tubes to the packaging station to package the tubes into larger units; (c) at least one blade for cutting a two-ply or multi-ply film strip into individual webs; (d) a welding device for welding the individual webs to form endless tubes; (e) a plurality of transverse cutters for cutting the endless tubes to a desired tube length to form tubular bodies, (f) a transfer device for gathering together a number of the tubular bodies after being cut to the desired tube length to form a larger transfer group; (g) a turn table comprising a plurality of stations each having a number of mandrels with a mandrel spacing, the number of mandrels of each station corresponding to the number of the tubular bodies in the transfer group, the tubular bodies in the transfer group being jointly transferred to the turn table by the transfer device; (h) the plurality of stations having assembling devices for attaching the shoulder portion of each tubular body with the threaded neck and the closure cap, the turn table conveying the tubular bodies jointly and gradually to the stations for forming finished tubes; (i) a withdrawing device for jointly removing the finished tubes from the mandrels; (j) a delivery belt comprising first and second toothed belts positioned parallel to each other having transport prisms with a transport prism spacing between transport prisms corresponding to the mandrel spacing of the mandrels on the turn table, the finished tubes being jointly deposited on the delivery belt by the withdrawing device; (k) a plurality of control regions having control devices for examining the finished tubes delivered by the delivery belt and for selecting flawless tubes and unusable tubes from the finished tubes; (l) a collection device comprising a plurality of rotatable suction prisms for picking up the flawless tubes; and (m) a tray for receiving flawless tubes carried on the transport prisms continuously fed by the rotatable suction prisms.