This application is the U.S. National Stage of PCT/EP2020/051478 filed on Jan. 22, 2020, which application claims priority under 35 USC § 119 to French Patent Application No. 19 00621 filed on Jan. 24, 2019. Both of these applications are hereby incorporated by reference in their entirety.
The invention relates to the field of facilities for sorting parcels or packets, and more particularly “small import packets”.
“Small import packets” are considered to be small goods of low value.
They are sorted and delivered within a few days, and so large-scale sorting/handling logistics centers have been designed that are capable of sorting several hundreds of thousands of “small import packets” per day into tens of thousands of different destinations.
“Tray” or “platform” sorting conveyors are already known that are capable of transporting and sorting a very wide variety of packets or parcels. In order to increase the throughput rate of such sorters, it is sought firstly to increase their speed of movement, and secondly to reduce the pitch of the trays or platforms, i.e. to reduce the spacing between them. In a field other than sorting, U.S. Pat. No. 4,709,529 discloses a tray conveyor that serves for wrapping.
A key element of such tray sorting conveyors is the unit for loading the trays, which unit must adapt to accommodate a high speed of movement of the trays along the tray conveying path and a minimum actual width of the tray relative to the maximum dimension of the sorted packets. It is also essential for the loading unit to be able to reject a packet, if necessary, without generating any interruption or disturbance for the remainder of the stream of packets.
An object of the invention is thus to propose a handling system for handling parcels or packets and more specifically “small import packets” that comprises a tray conveyor with trays spaced apart in pairs at a constant pitch, and a loading unit for loading the packets onto the trays of the conveyors at a rate of one packet per tray, said unit being suitable for enabling the packets to be loaded accurately onto the trays driven at a constant speed with the constraint that a packet can have dimensions close to the dimensions of the tray, and also with the constraint that the spacing pitch between two adjacent trays should be as small as possible in order to increase the overall throughput rate of the tray conveyor, with the further constraint of being able to reject a packet on the fly.
To this end, the invention provides a sorting system for sorting parcels or packets, which sorting system comprises a tray conveyor and a loading unit for loading packets onto the trays of the conveyor at a rate of one packet per tray, said sorting system being characterized in that said loading unit comprises a slat conveyor with slats that extend longitudinally in a direction perpendicular to a loading side of the tray conveyor, in that said loading unit further comprises a plurality of pusher shoes each of which is mounted to slide along a respective slat of the slat conveyor and which are spaced apart in pairs with uniform spacing, in that each pusher shoe is further guided by a rail that forms a cam under the slats of the slat conveyor and that follows a slanting path so that a packet arriving on a first side of the slat conveyor and facing a pusher shoe is pushed transversely on the slat conveyor so that, by moving slantwise, it reaches the loading side of the tray conveyor where it is injected onto a tray of the tray conveyor while said tray is moving, and in that the rail forms a cam comprising two closed guide loops that are interconnected via a switch controlled by a monitoring and control unit, one of the loops following a slanting path and the other loop following a rectilinear path going over the top of a receptacle for receiving reject packets, and the monitoring and control unit being arranged to actuate the switch if it detects that a packet at the inlet of the loading unit cannot be injected onto a free tray of the tray conveyor in such a manner as to direct said packet towards the reject packet receptacle.
The handling system of the invention may have the following features:
An example of a sorting/handling system of the invention is shown in the drawing.
In this example, the parcel or packet sorting facility includes a packet sorting/handling system of the invention with a horizontal tray sorting conveyor 1 having trays or platforms 2 that, in this example, are spaced apart in pairs at a constant pitch Pp, and a loading unit 3 for loading the trays with packets.
The tray conveyor thus operates as a sorter, the sorting outlets not being shown in
The tray conveyor may use any technology, e.g. it may be a “tilt-tray” or “slide-tray” conveyor, a “cross-belt” conveyor, or a “split-tray” or “bomb-bay” conveyor, or indeed a “push-tray” conveyor.
The trays are arranged to move the packets P in series as flat or as in tilted positions, it being possible for each tray to have the capacity to unload the packet by the tray being raised along one side or along one end.
In accordance with the invention, the loading unit comprises a slat conveyor 4 on which a plurality of pusher shoes are mounted as shown in
As shown in
The slats 4A that are spaced apart in pairs at constant pitch may be more or less close together or indeed may even overlap in pairs so as to eliminate gaps. The pitch of the slats is a sub-multiple of the pitch of the trays of the tray conveyor. The total length of the slat conveyor is a multiple of the pitch of the tray conveyor.
The conveyors 1 and 4 are closed-loop conveyors.
In accordance with the invention, each of the pusher shoes 5, four of which are indicated by 5A to 5D in
The loading unit in this example and as shown in
In accordance with the invention, each pusher shoe is constituted by a shoe 6 that is, for example, fitted to and mounted to slide along a slat 4A, and that is provided with a pusher blade 7 that is fastened to it and that is of width close to the width of a tray 2, said blade facing the loading rectilinear side 1A of the tray conveyor 1.
When the pitch P1p is wide, the pusher shoe may be split into a plurality of sliding shoes that are separated by one or more slats, in such a manner as to facilitate turning at the ends of the slat conveyor. In which case, only one of the shoes of each pusher is a drive shoe in that it is driven by the rail while the other component shoes of the same pitch engage in interfitting manner with the drive shoe along the straight line segments so as to be driven in parallel, and become disengaged while they are going around the turns.
The top surface of the slat conveyor 4 that can be seen in
The slats 4A are driven conventionally by two closed-loop chains that mesh with a motor drive unit powered via a variable speed drive.
A monitoring and control unit designated by the reference Ucc in
In accordance with the invention, each shoe 6 (drive shoe) is also guided as it moves by a rail 8 that forms a cam shown in
The rail 8 is a closed-loop rail that follows a certain path between the upstream end and the downstream end of the slat conveyor 4 with a return path back towards the upstream end.
For example, each shoe (drive shoe) may be provided with a wheel that engages in the rail 8 through the slatted bed of the conveyor 4 and that acts as a cam follower finger.
The closed-loop rail 8 has a first shoe-guiding segment for injecting the packets P onto the trays 2, which segment extends essentially slantwise between the upstream and downstream ends of the conveyor 4 while becoming closer to the loading side 1A in the direction V, which direction V also shows the direction of movement of the trays 2 and the direction of movement of the shoes 6 on the top of the of the slat conveyor 4.
The rail 8 has a return shoe-guiding segment for guiding the shoes as they go back from the downstream end of the conveyor 4 to the upstream end thereof.
In
As can be seen in
The first segment S1 is rectilinear and parallel to the longitudinal axis of the slat conveyor. Its length is at least equal to the pitch P1p.
The inclination of the slant of the portion S2 may be approximately in the range 25° to 35°. The curvature of the rail between the segments S1 and S2 is progressive in order to avoid any jolt in transverse acceleration of the packets.
The return segment S4 of the rail that extends from the downstream end to the upstream end of the conveyor 4 also extends slantwise as shown in
Advantageously, the guide rail 8 may comprise two closed loops connected together via a switch (not shown) controlled by the monitoring and control unit Ucc. One of the two loops is constituted by the portions S1, S2, S3 and S4 of the rail that serve to inject the packets P onto the trays while the other loop (not shown in the figures) follows a closed-loop path that is essentially rectilinear and extends along and very close to the free side of the slat conveyor 4 while going over the top of the receptacle 9 shown in
As indicated above,
In accordance with the invention, the monitoring and control unit Ucc controls the feed magazine 10 to bring the packets one-by-one in series to the inlet of the slat conveyor 4 on the top of which the pusher shoes 5 move slantwise and are spaced apart in pairs at a constant pitch, and, in this example, with the same spacing as the trays 2.
Under the combined effect of the guiding in the rail 8 and of the sliding on a slat 4A, each pusher shoe 5 moves slantwise in the direction V, thereby making it possible, every time, to push a packet P towards the loading rectilinear edge 1A and to inject it onto a free tray 2 of the conveyor 1.
It should be understood that the monitoring and control unit Ucc is arranged to servo-control the speed at which packets are fed to the inlet of the conveyor 4 with the longitudinal speed of said conveyor 4. The monitoring and control unit Ucc also servo-controls the positions of the trays 2 with the positions of the pusher shoes so that, every time, the path of a pusher shoe 5 and the path of a tray 2 to be loaded coincide exactly for injecting a packet pushed by said pusher shoe onto said tray.
As can be understood from
If the monitoring and control unit Ucc detects that the current packet P detected at the inlet of the loading unit cannot be injected onto a free tray of the conveyor 1, it actuates the switch so that the pusher shoe 5 that is present at the downstream end of the slat conveyor and that takes charge of this current packet is guided by the second loop of the rail 8 in such a manner as to direct said packet towards the receptacle 9.
It should be understood that the handling system having a tray conveyor 1 with injectors having pusher shoes 5 may be applied to various types of parcels or packets, including other postal articles.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
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1900621 | Jan 2019 | FR | national |
Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind |
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PCT/EP2020/051478 | 1/22/2020 | WO | 00 |
Publishing Document | Publishing Date | Country | Kind |
---|---|---|---|
WO2020/152205 | 7/30/2020 | WO | A |
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4709529 | Matsuda et al. | Dec 1987 | A |
4732259 | Yu | Mar 1988 | A |
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5175976 | Petry | Jan 1993 | A |
5333715 | Sapp | Aug 1994 | A |
5388389 | Tisma | Feb 1995 | A |
5666789 | Ziegler | Sep 1997 | A |
5921378 | Bonnet | Jul 1999 | A |
6044956 | Henson | Apr 2000 | A |
6702106 | Sweazy | Mar 2004 | B1 |
6786404 | Bonner | Sep 2004 | B1 |
Number | Date | Country |
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2266647 | Oct 1975 | FR |
S571115 | Jan 1982 | JP |
2016014196 | Jan 2016 | WO |
Entry |
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PCT International Search Report and Written Opinion dated Apr. 20, 2020 from corresponding Application No. PCT/EP2020/051478, 14 pages. |
French Search Report dated Dec. 2, 2019 from corresponding Application No. FR 1900621, 2 pages. |
Number | Date | Country | |
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20210009364 A1 | Jan 2021 | US |