Importance

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Abstract

The apparatus evens up articles arriving on a flow smoothing belt (12) and leaving on a downstream belt (26) for feeding a wrapping machine, and provided with equidistant ledges (28) separating groups of articles, and with at least one corrector belt (16, 18), driven by a variable-speed motor (20, 22) for transferral of the articles to the downstream belt. The apparatus comprises: a detector (30) of the ledges in said downstream belt, adapted to supply a signal at the instant when each ledge passes a predetermined position; a first tachometer (40) adapted to supply a signal proportional to the speed of said downstream belt; an article-position detector (60, 62) for each corrector belt, adapted to deliver a signal at the instant when each article enters said corrector belt; and a microprocessor (80, 82) for each corrector belt, connected for receiving the signals generated by said ledge detector, from said first tachometer and from said article-position detector for the associated corrector belt, and connected for delivering a speed-control signal to the motor of said corrector belt, and programmed for controlling the speed of the associated corrector belt to a base value which is proportional to the speed of the downstream belt by a predetermined constant, and for instantaneously changing said base value of the speed by an additive corrective constant which is proportional to the product of said base speed and the position error of the article entering the corrector belt.

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First Claim