Patent Application
20220230503
This invention relates to machines for vending or dispensing discrete articles, and more particularly relates to an apparatus and a method for vending articles such as scrub garments or the like.
Scrub garments are uniforms typically worn by doctors, nurses, and other medical workers in hospital operating rooms or other locations where the workers are likely to be in immediate proximity with patients. These scrub garments are hereafter called “scrubs”. Scrubs provide an easily-changed launderable barrier between the wearer and the patient, helping to prevent the patient from exposure to germs or infectants on the wearer's body or street clothing, and also helping to protect the wearer's body from direct physical contact with a patient.
Scrubs usually are two-piece garments, consisting of a top or shirt and a bottom or pants. The tops and bottoms are stocked in different sizes to accommodate the needs of individual wearers. Scrub jackets also are worn by doctors and others. Soiled scrubs are collected for laundering and subsequent reuse, but scrubs must be periodically replaced due to wear and tear encountered in normal use as well as the effects of repeated launderings using the high temperatures and detergents required to clean and sterilize the soiled scrubs.
Hospitals normally make scrubs available to doctors and other medical workers at no direct cost to those users. Although each user is supposed to have only a limited number of scrubs at any given time for his or her personal use, some users will hoard scrubs of their size to maintain their own personal reserve. Other users may appropriate extra sets of scrubs for their own personal use, at home or elsewhere outside the hospital. These and other improper uses of scrubs contribute to an unacceptable shrinkage in the inventory of scrubs maintained by the institution for use by authorized persons.
This inventory problem is aggravated by careless handling when scrubs are stacked for use by anyone, some people will withdraw a scrub from within the pile instead of removing the scrub at the top of the pile. This action often inadvertently dumps one or more clean scrubs from the pile onto the floor. That scrub must be relaundered before use, thereby reducing the remaining useful life of the scrub without the benefit of its use before relaundering. Both the shrinkage of the scrub inventory and the need for relaundering scrubs due to careless handling increases the cost of providing and maintaining a sufficient supply of scrubs.
Some hospitals try to control the distribution of scrubs by requiring users to check out scrubs from personnel at central locations. Using this approach, each authorized individual is permitted to have no more than a certain number of scrubs in his or her possession at any time. The individual must return soiled scrubs to receive credit for clean scrubs. Although this approach can alleviate the problems mentioned above, it is expensive to maintain. Many hospitals are large enough to require several scrub-dispensing locations throughout the hospital. Furthermore, because hospitals never close, scrub dispensing locations must be staffed around the clock. The direct and indirect labor costs of that staffing add significantly to the overall cost of maintaining an adequate inventory of scrubs.
It has been proposed to overcome the foregoing problems by dispensing scrubs from a vending machine. However, the kinds of vending machines currently available in the art, and the nature of articles such as scrubs, have limited the practicality of vending machines as a solution to those problems. Most current vending machines operate on the principle that the items being dispensed are held on a shelf awaiting dispensing. The individual items then are pushed to the edge of the shelf and allowed to fall to the bottom of the machine. A door in the bottom allows access to the dispensed item by the user. The disadvantages of such machines are that they are relatively large in depth because of the space required to store the products on shelves and to allow room for free fall to the bottom of the machine. That free fall space also detracts from volume in the machine that otherwise could hold a larger inventory of scrubs. The overall size of the vending machine is particularly important in hospital applications because such machines used for vending scrubs may be placed in hallways or other locations not sized to receive conventional vending machines.
Another common kind of vending machine is the so-called pinwheel machine. The items being vended are received in compartments on a pinwheel or carousel within the machine, and each item is given access to an exit door by turning the pinwheel to place the item in front of that door. These machines also have a size disadvantage because at least two dimensions of the machine (for example, depth and width) must be the same to accommodate the round pinwheel.
The nature of scrubs themselves compounds the difficulty of dispensing those goods through a conventional vending machine. Most vending machines dispense discrete articles having a fixed and unchanging physical size or shape. For example, beverage cans or bottles, cigarette packages, and candy bars each have relatively fixed and rigid shapes that allow handling those articles by the mechanism of a vending machine. Scrubs, in contrast with most other discrete articles dispensed by a vending machine, are relatively soft folded garments that are not within a rigid package. Due to the relative flexibility and low mass of scrubs, they are not readily vendable by machines that move or transport the goods from a storage location to an access door.
One example of a vending or dispensing device for hospital garments of this type is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,628,985 which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety. The device disclosed in that patent attempts to accommodate the fact that hospital garments are cloth and not all the same size by placing clean garments in each of various slot-like compartments, and then employing a system of doors to permit customer access to the compartments to obtain the garments. The scrub dispensing system of that patent has 120 fixed and separate compartments, and each is to contain a top and a bottom folded together. This makes it impossible to obtain just the top or just the bottom, if only one garment becomes soiled and needs to be replaced after a procedure. If it is desired to provide a mixed-size scrub suit where the top and bottom are of different sizes, the laundry attendant would have to load this unusual combination specifically into a slot in the machine. Consequently, mixed sizing of scrubs is difficult logistically and is a major problem to satisfy. Also, to access the slots, there is a system of eight outer doors that each extend across the front of the machine from top to bottom, and a system of vertical extrusions behind them that are movable to provide access to a single slot at a time. Thus, for some customers, it is necessary to reach high to an upper slot, or to bend down to a low slot to obtain scrubs. The unit has a card reader or badge reader associated with it to permit customer access, and also has a keypad for entry of customer data and can be connected to a laundry network to provide data about customer activity and scrub dispenser status.
Another prior attempt to solve some of the problems with prior art dispensing systems is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,474,938, which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety. The system of that patent is an automated article dispensing device for dispensing articles to a plurality of users includes a garment storage compartments arranged in a plurality of tiers and an article delivery system configured to retrieve a top-most article from at least one the stack and deliver the article to a dispensing outlet. The article delivery system includes a plurality of article retrieval systems equal in number to the number of tiers of the storage compartments.
It was desired to create a scrubs dispense cabinet with at least the additional advantages of increased capacity and dispensing rate, simplicity of design, and to be able to dispense scrub tops and bottoms separately. Moreover, a dispensing system which is more compact and has higher storage capacity than known dispensers is also desired.
These and other shortcomings in the prior art have been addressed by this invention which in various embodiments includes a dispenser for scrubs or other items. While this invention is described and shown herein dispensing scrubs, other clothing, textile or any item may be dispensed from it. The dispenser according to various embodiments of this invention is modular in that it can be configured with a desired number of cells for storing items and dispensing them accordingly. Additionally, the dispenser of this invention is more compact than prior dispensers thereby requiring a smaller footprint in the hospital or other setting where floor space is often at a premium. Moreover, the dispenser of this invention has fewer moving parts than prior dispensers thereby lessening the likelihood of malfunctions, downtime and unexpected maintenance. Another advantage of the dispenser according to this invention is the ability to dispense the items quickly and efficiently with multiple, simultaneous delivery of items to a user or operator. Further, the dispenser of this invention is modular and can be tailored to a specific requirement and later modified to house and dispense a larger number of items as needed.
These and other advantages of the dispenser according to embodiments of this invention are achieved by a main or primary bank of cells with each cell housing an inventory of multiple items for dispensing. In one embodiment, each cell houses 100 scrubs and each bank contains four cells so each bank has an inventory of up to 400 scrubs for dispensing. Each cell may house a specific item type (top, bottom, coat, etc.) of designated size (XS, S, M, L, XL, XXL, etc.). The main bank of four cells may operate in a standalone manner to dispense items, or additional banks can be added to the main bank for increased inventory capacity. In one embodiment, the dispenser may include multiple banks with four cells in the main bank, eight cells with one bank added to the main bank, twelves cells with two banks serially added to the main bank, sixteen cells with three banks serially added to the main bank, and so on.
The items are stored in a vertical stack in each cell with the uppermost item in the cell being the next item in that cell to be dispensed. In various embodiments, the cells in each bank are arranged in a square or quadrangular arrangement. A pair of pickers each translate along a gantry to be selectively positioned above one of the cells for picking via a suction mechanism or a mechanical picking mechanism to pull the uppermost item in the cell and elevate it out of the cell. The picker on each gantry services two of the cells in the bank. The pickers may operate simultaneously to pick and dispense multiple items at the same time. Each cell includes a platform supporting the vertical stack of items. The platform is moved vertically by an elevator mechanism to always position the upper most item in the cell at the top of the cell for convenient retrieval by the associated picker.
Once picked, the item is moved by the picker along the gantry to a discharge position in the main bank over a discharge delivery chute. When the picker moves into position over the chute in the main bank, it releases the item which falls onto the chute and is directed by gravity or otherwise toward a delivery port in the dispenser for retrieval by the user or operator. When additional banks are added to the main bank, the gantries are extended or replaced with appropriately sized gantries to cover all of the banks in the configured dispenser. While the horizontal travel of the pickers along the gantries is dependent upon the number of banks in the dispenser, the vertical travel of each picker to pick the topmost item in the appropriate cell is constant and minimized to allow for quicker and more efficient retrieval of the items from the stacks of items in the cells.
In various embodiments of the dispenser of this invention, items are dispensed in a quicker and more efficient manner from a dispenser housing a larger inventory of items in a smaller footprint than known dispensers.
The above-mentioned and other features and advantages of this invention, and the manner of attaining them, will become more apparent and the invention itself will be better understood by reference to the following description of embodiments of the invention taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, wherein:
Referring to
The dispenser 10 embodiment of
The modularity of the dispenser 10 of various embodiments of this invention is derived from the capability of adding blocks 30, as needed, to the dispenser 12. Each block 30 contains four cells 28 with each cell 28 having a longitudinal, generally vertical axis parallel with the vertical, longitudinal axes of the other cells 28. Each cell 28 may contain one vertical stack 26 of scrubs 12 to be dispensed according to various embodiments of this invention. The dispenser 10 shown in
As shown in
The dispenser 10 includes the picker module 18 situated atop the cabinet 14. The picker module 18 is sized and configured according to the number of banks 30 in the dispenser 10 as the picker module 18 services all of the banks 30 and associated cells 28 in the dispenser 10. The picker module 18 includes a pair of parallel gantries 46 extending across the tops of the banks 30 and associated cells 28 as shown in
As shown most clearly in
In
In the embodiment of the dispenser 10 shown in
A further alternative embodiment of the dispenser according to this invention is shown in
The dispenser 10 embodiment of
The modularity of the dispenser 10 of various embodiments of this invention is derived from the capability of adding blocks 30, as needed, to the dispenser 12. Each block 3o may contain four cells 28 with each cell 28 having one vertical stack 26 of scrubs 12 to be dispensed according to various embodiments of this invention. The block 30 may contain another quantity of cells 28 within the scope of this invention. The dispenser 10 shown in
As shown in
The dispenser 10 includes the picker module 18 situated atop the cabinet 14. The picker module 18 is sized and configured according to the number of banks 30 in the dispenser 10 as the picker module 18 services all of the banks 30 and associated cells 28 in the dispenser 10. The picker module 18 includes a pair of parallel gantries 46 extending across the tops of the banks 30 and associated cells 28 as shown in
As shown most clearly in
From the above disclosure of the general principles of this invention and the preceding detailed description of at least one embodiment, those skilled in the art will readily comprehend the various modifications to which this invention is susceptible. Therefore, we desire to be limited only by the scope of the following claims and equivalents thereof.
This claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 63/138,582, filed Jan. 18, 2021 and hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 63138582 | Jan 2021 | US |
