An automated facility for the unscrambling of light, hollow, elongated articles (3) and for the lined up delivery of said articles such as empty plastic containers.
Several article unscrambling and lining up units (1, 1a) are interconnected so as to deliver articles in a preunscrambled arrangement to discharge chutes (10) which convey said articles along a closed circuit with their bottom slidingly resting on a floor (12). These discharge chutes are delimited by a casing (11).
A first opening is provided in said floor (12) and the casing (11) includes a second opening (39) next to said first opening. A conveyor (14) bearing a plurality of article receiver members (21a) is arranged to receive articles (3) from said chutes (10). The facility includes means to synchronize the speed of the conveyor (14) and of said unscrambler units (1, 1a) in such a way that each of said units (1, 1a) does cyclically discharge an article (3) into one of every n article receiver members of said conveyor, n being equal to the number of units (1, 1a) of the facility. The article receiver members already loaded with an article (3) are placed between the chutes (10), conveniently spaced, of the remaining units (1, 1a).