GB1338053A - Control arrangements for conveyors - Google Patents

Abstract

1338053 Sorting letters &c. ELLIOTT BROS (LONDON) Ltd 10 July 1972 [16 July 1971] 33567/71 Heading G4H [Also in Division B8] A control arrangement for a conveyer 3 for distributing articles 2 from a dispatch point to destinations D1, ..., D64 (e.g. sorting letters) comprises a register 6 having 512 stages corresponding to successive portions of the conveyer route AB, means 1, 4, 5, 8 for supplying to the first stage of 6 an address indicative of the number of the portion of the route forming the destination of an article at the dispatch point, a pulse unit 9 for transferring an address from one stage of 6 to the next as the associated article moves from one portion of the route to the next, an oscillator 11 operative between transfers to step each address to the last stage of 6 and back through the first stage to its original stage while a counter 512 counts down from 512 to indicate the original stage of each address as it appears at the last stage, and means responsive to the coincidence of an address in the last stage of 6 and the count in 12 to effect the removal of the article from the conveyer 3. In the embodiment of Fig. 2 the address comprises the last six binary digits of the destination portion number, and hence of the corresponding stage in 6 (if this were not so, then more gates would be required as in the embodiment of Fig. 1). The output from 12 is also converted to octal form at 22-24 and enables one of 64 gates 25 (8 degree output being common to all signals): the outputs from 25 and 21 together activate one of 64 destination stores 14, thereby operating a diverter 16 at the destination of the article. Each address is applied to a store 1 via a keyboard or apparatus scanning code marks on the article: initial movement of the article interrupts a light beam to produce a signal 8 which causes the transfer of the address in 1 to register 6 on the next pulse 9.