An apparatus and system for aligning and packing rollable items such as prolate or spherical fruit; an apparatus to remove a single tray from a stack of trays and method therefor; a wrapper to wrap a tray in plastic film and method therefor; an apparatus to laterally retain a spherical or prolate fruit and method therefor; and an apparatus for aligning a fruit via series of rollers and/or suction heads and a method therefor.

A selective transplanter is provided for transplanting seedlings from a tray to seedling planting apparatus. The tray includes a plurality of cells for holding plugs of growing medium containing seedlings. The transplanter is arranged to eject plugs from the cells of the tray to a conveyor which conveys the plugs to the seedling planting apparatus. The transplanter is arranged to remove plugs that do not contain germinated seedlings from the conveyor at a removal position before they are transferred to the seedling planting apparatus. A seedling retention roller engages with plant material of the seedlings projecting from the plugs at the removal position before the plugs are transferred to the seedling planting apparatus, preventing removal of plugs containing seedlings with projecting plant material. The transplanter provides the advantage that the plugs containing seedlings can be planted in rows in a field without dud plugs being planted, leaving the rows substantially gap free.

The invention includes a method (100) and an apparatus to handle irregularly conveyed and/or irregularly aligned and/or non-upright articles of an article stream under prevention of disturbances. The method (100) comprises the following steps: identifying at least one non-upright article in an article stream as an error; performing a correction step to resolve the error, the correction step comprising removal from the article stream of the at least one irregularly aligned article, or transfer to an upright orientation of the at least one irregularly aligned article, with a defined action being exerted temporally before and/or in temporal overlap with the correction step upon the at least one irregularly aligned article or upon regularly conveyed articles of the article stream.

An aligning and conveying apparatus includes a rotating disk having a bottom wall, a first ring having a first circumferential wall, a second ring having a second circumferential wall. First and second conveying parts are respectively provided in upper parts of the first and second circumferential walls. In the rotating disk and the first ring, the bottom wall is positioned lower than the first conveying part to form a retaining space for retaining preparations inside the first ring. The respective rotational axes are relatively inclined such that the preparations move from the bottom wall to the first conveying part at a first delivery position. In the first and second rings, the first conveying part is positioned lower than the second conveying part, and the respective rotational axes are relatively inclined such that the preparations move from the first conveying part to the second conveying part at a second delivery position.

A system, and associated method, for launching and delivering separated food product in organized groups to a robotized packaging station for the product. The system initiates the delivery via a metered hopper of food product delivering the product to a launch V-belt that aligns the product end to end. A successive singulator belt, positioned adjacent to and receiving product from the launch belt, further organizes the product into a single file alignment. An optional separator belt may follow the singulator belt to create gaps between successive product units. The product is then delivered to a pick belt for product to be provided to the packaging robot. The system product information is from a single (per product delivery line) sensor, enabling intergrated end-to-end control from hopper to robot, and a nearly continuous motion of said pick belt.

There is disclosed a separator drum (13) for tobacco industry product assembly apparatus. The separator drum has a plurality of segments (29, 30) arranged to form at least a part of a peripheral surface of the separator drum. Each segment has at least one flute (31) and at most four flutes (31). Each flute (31) is adapted to carry a rod of aerosolisable material (2) as the separator drum rotates during use. Each segment (29, 30) is slidably mounted to the separator drum (13) for axial movement.

A modular conveying assembly includes active roller control for reducing backline pressure without product to product contact when accumulating products. Methods are discussed for manipulating objects by a bump-through indexing operation, a slug-control indexing operation, a catch-and-release indexing operation, box or case turning operations, and zero-pressure accumulation operations.

Provided is an aligning and conveying apparatus 1 comprising a rotating disk 10 having a disk-shaped bottom wall 11 and supported so as to be rotatable, a first ring 20 having a first circumferential wall 21 surrounding the bottom wall 11 and supported so as to be rotatable, and a second ring 30 having a second circumferential wall 31 surrounding the first circumferential wall 21 and supported so as to be rotatable, wherein a first conveying part 91 and a second conveying part 92 are respectively provided in upper parts of the first circumferential wall 21 and the second circumferential wall 31, in the rotating disk 10 and the first ring 20, the bottom wall 11 is positioned lower than the first conveying part 91 so as to form a retaining space S for retaining preparations P inside the first ring 10, and the respective rotational axes are relatively inclined such that the preparations P move from the bottom wall 11 to the first conveying part 91 at a first delivery position P1, and in the first ring 20 and the second ring 30, the first conveying part 91 is positioned lower than the second conveying part 92, and the respective rotational axes are relatively inclined such that the preparations P move from the first conveying part 91 to the second conveying part 92 at a second delivery position P2.

The invention relates to an apparatus and to a method for transporting products (10), in particular for packaging machines, wherein the apparatus comprises at least one product feed (12), via which products (10) can be fed in one after another, at least one transfer device (18) having a multiplicity of mutually independently movable movers (22), wherein at least one mover (22) has at least one product holder (24) for removing at least one of the products (10) fed in by the product feed (12), comprising at least one product discharge (36, 39, 40), wherein at least one intermediate transport (30) is provided to receive the product (10) removed from the product holder (24), wherein the intermediate transport (30) is arranged upstream of the product discharge (36, 39, 40) and is designed to be movable independently of the product discharge (36, 39, 40).

An orientation system for conveyors of products designed to divert the latter from a primary feed direction to a secondary feed direction and comprising a plurality of orienting units. Each orienting unit comprises a transporting element rotatable around a rotation axis and an actuating member to actuate the rotation of at least one transporting element so as to control the rotation of a transporting element. The actuating member comprises a primary transmission element and a planet transmission element designed to be coupled to the primary transmission element; at least two housing seats for respective planet transmission elements being designed to transmit the rotation motion of the transporting element to an adjacent orienting unit.