Patent ID: 8448487

Claim:
A vessel forming station comprising: a plurality of operation wheels configured in opposing facing pairs, each operation wheel comprising a plurality of work zones, each work zone of an operation wheel configured in an opposing facing pair with a work zone of another operation wheel to engage a vessel and perform a forming operation on said vessel; a plurality of linear drives interconnected with said plurality of operation wheels that push opposing facing pairs of said plurality of operation wheels to a closed position to engage said vessel and allow said plurality of work zones to perform a plurality of said forming operations on said vessel, and pull opposing facing pairs of said plurality of operation wheels to an open position to allow said vessel to be indexed to other operation positions; a conveyor system positioned between opposing facing pairs of said plurality of operation wheels that engages and indexes said vessel through said plurality of operations at a rotational timing coordinated to index said vessel when opposing facing pairs of said plurality of operation wheels are in said open position; and a controller communicatively coupled with a plurality of network based data process resources and configured to index said conveyor system clockwise or counterclockwise based on whether a decoration operation is to be performed on said vessel.