Importance

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Abstract

Olives from which the pits have already been removed are deposited on the upward-sloping carrying run of an endless conveyor which is made of a succession of rollers mounted to chains entrained about sprockets. The rollers have flexible disk-like fins of progressively increasing and decreasing diameter from fin to fin so that the olives tend to settle into pockets and orient with their lengths crosswise of the belt as the rollers are rotated. The belt conveys the olives into a shaft of slicing disks. Olive slices are received between slicing disks and an assisting roller pushes in the remainder of any olive only partially sliced through, except that contact of the slicing disks with any pit still contained in an olive pushes that olive more deeply into a respective inter-roller pocket by flexing the respective roller fins. At separate locations along the conveyor, a comb pulls the olive slices out from between the slicing disks, and the pocket-entrapped pit-containing olives are dislodged.

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First Claim