The invention relates to conveyor apparatus comprising a main conveyor by which mail items are routed by being nipped between a transport belt and a main belt, and a secondary conveyor towards which the mail items are routed, after switching, along a secondary belt, said main and said secondary belts performing the main conveying and the secondary conveying functions being constituted by a single, common belt that is twisted twice.
Such conveyor apparatus is known from Patent Document FR-2 555 974. It is used for switching mail items and stacking them in the sorting outlets of a postal sorting machine. In that known conveyor apparatus which is shown very diagrammatically in
In such conveyor apparatus, it has been observed that the path of the belt 9′ can vary in the vertical plane, which is detrimental to proper operation of the stackers of the sorting machine. Such untimely displacements of the belt 9′ are presently eliminated by regularly and manually re-centering the belt 9‘on the pulleys P’, which gives rise to non-negligible maintenance costs.
An object of the invention is to mitigate that drawback.
To this end, the invention provides conveyor apparatus comprising a main conveyor by which mail items are routed by being nipped between a transport belt and a main belt, and a secondary conveyor towards which the mail items are routed, after switching, along a secondary belt, said main and said secondary belts performing the main conveying and the secondary conveying functions being constituted by a single, common belt that is twisted twice, said conveyor apparatus being characterized in that said twice-twisted belt is engaged over a tensioner pulley that is a floating pulley.
In a particular embodiment of the conveyor apparatus of the invention, the floating pulley has a rotary shaft whose floating ends are connected to respective ones of two tensioners, e.g. helical springs mounted in respective support tubes for the purposes of controlling belt lengthening.
The floating pulley of the invention thus has an axis of rotation that is mounted to be floating in three-dimensional space. With this arrangement, it is thus simple for the twice-twisted belt to be stabilized simply in the vertical plane by self-centering with, in addition, the twice-twisted belt being tensioned dynamically, which compensates for it lengthening over time.
In the conveyor apparatus of the invention, the twice-twisted belt follows a figure-of-eight shaped path having two loops, and said belt has two twisted belt segments that are superposed where the two loops cross over, said two belt segments being in contact with each other over their entire length between two deflector pulleys. With this arrangement of the twice-twisted belt, friction noise in the conveyor apparatus is reduced considerably.
The invention will be better understood on reading the following description of an embodiment given with reference to the figures, in which:
As shown in
The main conveyor 2 comprises a transport belt 6 driven by friction by a set of motor-driven pulleys Ptr distributed along the sorting outlets of the sorting machine. At each sorting outlet, the belt 6 co-operates by nipping with a first rectilinear segment 7 (forming a main belt) of a twice-twisted belt 9 that is engaged around deflector pulleys P1 and P2 disposed in alignment along the belt 6. As can be seen in
The stacker conveyor 4 comprises a stacker belt (or secondary belt) constituted by a second segment 8 of the twice-twisted belt 9 that extends between two deflector pulleys P4 and P5 over which the belt 9 is engaged. The stacker conveyor 4 further comprises a guide belt constituted by a segment 14 of another twice-twisted belt 9 of adjacent other conveyor apparatus D, said other belt 9 being engaged around pulleys P2 an P3 disposed in alignment with the segment 8. A mail item 1 passing into the stacker conveyor 4 is nipped between the stacker belt and the guide belt so as to be routed in the direction of advance S2 towards the stacker 5 of the sorting outlet.
A twice-twisted belt 9 in conveyor apparatus D thus performs the functions both of main conveyor 2 and of stacker conveyor 4.
The figure-of-eight shaped path of the twice-twisted belt 9 is defined by disposing a set of deflector pulleys P1, P2, P3, P4, P5, P6 and one motor-driven pulley P7. As can be seen in
The twice-twisted belt has two twisted belt segments 10, 11 which are superposed where the two figure-of-eight loops cross over. The two parallel belt segments extend between the two deflector pulleys P4 and P7, and they are in contact (face-against-face) with each other over their entire length between said two deflector pulleys P4 and P7. With this arrangement, the operating noise in the conveyor apparatus is reduced considerably because there is no friction between the belt segments 9. More particularly, the path of the twice-twisted belt 9 is as follows: after going round the pulley P3, it rests against the pulley P7 from which it is twisted once until it comes into contact with the pulley P4. After going round the pulley Pf, it rests against the pulley P7 again, and it is twisted again until it comes to rest against the pulley P4, from which it resumes a non-twisted configuration. The belt 9 is thus twisted a first time between the pulleys P7 and P4, and then a second time again between the pulleys P7 and P4, which corresponds to where the two loops of the figure-of-eight formed by the belt 9 cross over.
Even more precisely, it is considered that the belt 9 has a drive face in contact with the pulleys and a friction face in contact with the mail items. The drive face is the inside face of the belt, i.e. the face situated inside the path of the belt. The friction face is the outside face of the belt, i.e. the face situated outside the path of the belt. As can be seen in
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
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04 50703 | Apr 2004 | FR | national |