Abstract:
Indented fruit such as apples are oriented with their stem indents down on a cup conveyor. To improve and maintain this orientation, a rotatable stem indent centering pin moves upwardly into the indent and a rotatable blossom indent centering pin moves down into the blossom indent. The bottom centering pin lifts the fruit out of the cup, and the two centering pins are rotated in opposite directions. This rotation causes the fruit to shift into precise alignment with the centering pins, and a spring-biased centering cup coaxial with the upper centering pin preserves this alignment while the centering pins retract, and during the next following stemming operation.
Abstract:
Apples are oriented for coring on a cup conveyor. Indent-finder wheels are rotatably mounted below the cup conveyor on a reciprocating finding-wheel carriage which is linked for reciprocation with an apple-coring carriage. A bellcrank linkage arrangement, part of which is mounted on the coring carriage is operated to retract the finder wheels near the end of their advanced reciprocation and to reintroduce the wheels to a new set of cups after they have been reciprocated in a direction contrary to the cup-conveyor motion. Successive finder wheels are rotated in opposite directions. The conveyor cups are vertically vibrated to insure that fruits of all sizes are oriented by the finder wheels, without requiring the use of locating rings disposed above the cups. In a modified form, the finder wheels are on a chain which advances with the fruit cups.
Abstract:
A multiple lane fruit orienter having a conveyor comprising transverse carriers with fruit receiving cups. A rotary finder wheel projects into each cup from below to rotate the fruit and locate the stem cavity. In addition to being rotated the finder wheels are oscillated about a vertical axis to rotate the fruit in varying planes. After the stem cavity has been found the finder wheel is no longer rotated but rapidly oscillated with an increasing frequency and decreasing amplitude so that the major axis of the stem cavity and suture plane of the fruit become aligned with the finder wheel. An additional vibration is imparted to the cam that produces the finder wheel oscillation during the suture plane alignment.