JPS6344645B2 - - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION The present invention applies only speed control to a carrier that moves at a constant speed with a constant pitch, such as a tray on a tray conveyor, by controlling only the speed of a conveyed object that arrives at a fixed position at an arbitrary time without stopping. The present invention relates to a speed regulating type transfer device for transferring a vehicle to a predetermined position.

For example, when transporting newspaper bundles using a tray conveyor for automatic sorting by destination, conventionally,
A loading conveyor installed on the side of the tray conveyor transports the stack of newspapers to the vicinity of the tray conveyor, temporarily stops it at a fixed position, and then the stack of newspapers is re-launched at a certain timing based on the tray position detection signal. As a result, it was transferred to a predetermined position on the tray. Clutch brakes are normally used to stop and start conveyed items immediately before such transfer, but clutch brakes have difficulty operating at high frequencies exceeding approximately 60 times per minute, and they also prevent conveyance that has arrived earlier than the specified timing. Objects are temporarily stopped, and objects that arrive late are transferred to the next tray, so not only is the transfer efficiency low, but the cumulative stopping time can cause a subsequent object to collide with the preceding object. Conventional transfer devices of this type have had various drawbacks.

It is an object of the present invention to transfer objects carried in by an incoming conveyor to a fixed position on the carrier only by speed control, without stopping the conveyor, which moves at a constant speed with a constant pitch. The object of the present invention is to provide a speed-controlled transfer device that eliminates the above-mentioned drawbacks of the conventional technology.

Therefore, in the present invention, the speed of the accelerating conveyor at the front end of the input conveyor is adjusted according to the slowness between the time when the conveyed article arrives at the detection point on the input conveyor and the time when the conveyed article passes a predetermined position on the carrier to be transferred. The method is characterized in that the low-speed operation time and the high-speed operation time are determined by a microcomputer (hereinafter abbreviated as microcomputer) to transfer the object onto a predetermined carrier.

Examples of the present invention will be described below. In FIG. 1, reference numeral 1 denotes a tray conveyor, on which a tray 2, which can be tilted laterally as a carrier, is attached at a constant pitch and moves at a constant speed in the direction of the arrow. Loading conveyor 3 installed above tray conveyor 1
has an infeed conveyor 4, a timing conveyor 5, and acceleration conveyors 6, 7 that are connected to each other. Place it in the desired position on the tray 2.

In order to successfully load and transfer the articles M that arrive irregularly to a predetermined position on the tray 2 that moves at a constant speed, an optical detector 8 is provided at a detection position x on the timing conveyor 5 to detect the arrival of the articles M. The pulse generator 9 generates a carrier timing pulse each time, for example, the center of every other tray 2 arrives at a suitable synchronization position Z upstream from the position x.

FIG. 1a shows a case where when the conveyed object M arrives at the detection position x, the tray 2a to which it is to be fed is exactly at the synchronous position Z, and the conveyed object M drives the accelerating conveyors 6 and 7 at a low speed v. As a result, it is placed in the tray 2a at position Y as shown in Figure b. Further, FIG. 3c shows a case where when the conveyed object M arrives at position x, the tray 2b is at a position that is two trays ahead of the position Z, and the conveyed object M is moved by the accelerating conveyor 6,
7 is driven at high speed V, it is thrown into the tray 2b at position Y as shown in figure d. Also, e in the same figure is
When the conveyed object M arrives at the position By automatically distributing the speed time according to the length l, the conveyed object M is thrown into the tray 2c at the position Y as shown in figure f.

In the above embodiment, every other conveyed object M on the tray 2 is
This is because the transported items M are loaded and transferred at two locations on one tray conveyor 1.
In general, if a transported object M is transferred from n locations (n
-1) It is assumed that the conveyance items M are transferred every other piece.

The timing conveyor 5 is a belt conveyor, and as shown in FIG. 2, two rows of longitudinally long elongated holes 10a and 10b are bored in the center thereof so as to be offset from each other in the front and back. Optical detector 8 is 1
It has a pair of sensors 11a and 11b, and when the sensors receive light from the optical fiber 12 through the long holes 10a and 10b, they generate signals a and b shown in FIG. 3, and their logical sum signal c is Since M disappears when light is blocked, this causes the conveyed object M to move to position x
Detects arrival at . According to this optical detection method, arrival at a fixed position can be accurately detected regardless of the height, shape, etc. of the article M.

Figure 4 shows the position of the transported object M in Figure 1
Indicates the state of movement between. The conveyed object M, which has arrived at point x by the timing conveyor 5 at a constant speed Vo, is further speed-regulated by the acceleration conveyors 6 and 7 and reaches the point Y, but on the straight line ac, the acceleration conveyors 6 and 7 have a low speed v.
The straight line bc shows the movement state in the case of FIG. The travel time T is minutes. In the case of Fig. 1e, the tray 2c has moved forward by l when the conveyed object M arrives at
In order to recover the delay time t (between a and d in FIG. 4) corresponding to , the object is moved from point d to point e at a low speed v, and then transferred to point c at a high speed V. That is, × of the conveyed object M
The later the point arrival time is, the larger t becomes, the slower the slow moving time between d and e becomes, and the longer the faster moving time between e and c becomes, and the average speed becomes larger.

As is clear from the figure, between time t and the low-speed movement time and high-speed movement time, t+C(T-t)+[A-C(T-t)v]/V=
There is a CT connection. However, C is a constant determined by the ratio of v and V, and A is the distance between XY.

In the above formula, when t=0 A=CTv Also, when t=T T+A/V=CT ∴C=1+A/VT=1+Cv/V ∴C=V/(V-v) Therefore, if V=3v, C=1.5.

FIG. 5 is a control block circuit diagram for commanding the acceleration v or V to the acceleration conveyors 6, 7. The optical detector 8 outputs a detection signal r when the conveyed object M arrives at position x.
The pulse generator 9 also generates the carrier timing pulse p as described above. If signals p, r and a clock pulse s of period Δt are input to the microcomputer 14, and N clock pulses s are generated during one period T of signal p, then T=NΔt,
Also, the delay time t of the signal r with respect to the signal p is t=n
It can be expressed as Δt (n is the number of clock pulses) (FIG. 4).

In that case, in Fig. 4, the low speed movement time T ₁
is T ₁ =C(N-n)△t, and the high-speed travel time _T2 is _T2 = CT-n△t-C(N-n)△t=(C-1)
It becomes n△t. Therefore, by counting the number n of clock pulses occurring during the delay time of the signal r with respect to the signal p, the microcomputer 14 can obtain a speed command signal w that changes in accordance with T ₁ and T ₂ , and this signal w can be used to control the changeover switch. W is switched and an AND signal of the speed v or V setting signal set in the low speed setting device 15 and high speed setting device 16 and the signal r is applied to the motor controller 17 to control the speed of the motor 18 of the acceleration conveyors 6 and 7. do. A speed signal of the motor 18 is fed back to the controller 17 by a tachogenerator 19 directly connected to the motor 18 to perform closed loop control of the motor 18.

The microcomputer 14 functions as a means for realizing the transfer pitch of the tray conveyor 1 and the tray 2.
control operation time determination means 21 that determines the low speed operation time _T1 of the conveyors 6 and 7 by determining the delay time t from when the conveyed object M to be transferred to the conveyor reaches position Z and arrives at position x; and a speed adjustment means 22 for determining a low-speed operation time and a high-speed operation time.

FIG. 6 is a flowchart showing the operation of each of the means 20, 21, and 22 mentioned above. First, when the program starts, the transfer pitch designating means 20 repeats the operation of counting N clock pulses s by inputting the signal p and then resetting (step), and the low speed operation time determining means 21 repeats the operation of counting the clock pulses s by inputting the signal p. The number of pulses n counted until r is input is taken in, and the value of C(N-n) is calculated from the value of N-n. This value is the number of clock pulses during low speed operation time _T1 (step ~). Then, in the speed adjusting means 22, the clock pulse s is set to 1 from the value of C(N-n).
The subtraction value is subtracted step by step, and a low speed command is output until the subtracted value becomes 0. When the subtracted value becomes 0, a high speed command is output (step ~) and the program ends.

The changeover switch W is normally closed toward the high speed setting device 16, and is closed toward the low speed setting device 15 only when low speed operation is required. Therefore, the speed adjustment means 22 only needs to determine the low speed operation time _T1 ,
There is no need to separately regulate high-speed operation time _T2 .

When the conveyance item M is a bundle of newspapers, the newspapers folded into eight will be transferred to the acceleration conveyor 6 faster than those folded into four and transferred to the front of the tray 2, so that the newspaper folded into eight If so, the timing conveyor 5 is automatically slowed down and controlled so that the tray 2 is transferred to the center. To distinguish between 4-fold and 8-fold, three optical detectors placed in the transport direction are all blocked at the same time in the case of 4-fold, and only two are blocked at the same time in the case of 8-fold. , or by counting the number of pulses until the newspaper bundle passes.

In the above embodiment, the conveyed articles M are loaded into the tray 2 from above, but they may also be transferred from the side of the tray conveyor.
Since the tray conveyor 1 is connected in a diagonal direction to the tray conveyor 1, the speeds of the acceleration conveyors 6 and 7 are determined so that the speeds v and V of the acceleration conveyors 6 and 7 become equal to the speed in the direction of the tray conveyor 2. Further, the above embodiment is an example in which the conveyed object _M arrives at the detection point The accelerating conveyor, which normally operates at low speed, may be operated at high speed for a time corresponding to _t1 , and then return to low speed operation. In this case, the number of pulses (C-1)n corresponding to the high speed time _T2 is calculated in the speed regulating operation time determining means 21, and the high speed command is outputted from the speed adjusting means 22 during the time of this number of pulses.

The present invention has the above-mentioned configuration, and when transferring an object from an incoming conveyor to a carrier such as a tray conveyor, the object is moved to a predetermined position on the incoming conveyor without having to temporarily stop the object as in the conventional case. According to the arrival timing, the time distribution of the two high and low speeds of the following accelerating conveyor is adjusted to transfer the conveyed object to a predetermined position on the carrier, making it possible to smoothly perform frequent speed adjustments of the accelerating conveyor. At the same time, unlike the conventional method, the conveyed object is not temporarily stopped immediately before being transferred, so the transfer efficiency is good, and there are excellent effects such as no collision between the succeeding conveyed object and the preceding conveyed object.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

The drawings show an embodiment of the invention, and FIGS.
2 is a schematic elevational view showing the transfer action of the present invention in response to various relative positional deviations between the carrier and the transported object, FIG. 2 is a perspective view showing the principle of detecting the transported object by the detector, and FIG. FIG. 4 is an explanatory diagram of the operation of the accelerating conveyor, FIG. 5 is a control block circuit diagram, and FIG. 6 is a flowchart of the microcomputer. 1... Constant speed conveyor, 2... Carrier, 3... Loading conveyor, 5... Timing conveyor, 6, 7...
... Acceleration conveyor, 8 ... Detector, 9 ... Pulse generator, 17 ... Motor controller, 20 ... Transfer pitch designation means, 21 ... Speed control operation time judgment means, 22 ... Speed adjustment means, M ...Conveyed goods, p...
...carrier timing pulse, r...detection signal, x...
...detection position.

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. A transfer device that transfers objects from an incoming conveyor to a predetermined number of carriers on a constant-speed conveyor in which the conveyors are installed at a constant pitch, and a detector that detects when the incoming conveyor has arrived at the detection position of the objects. and an acceleration conveyor connected to the tip of the timing conveyor and controlled to switch between high and low speeds, the pulse generator generating a carrier timing pulse every time the predetermined number of carriers pass a fixed position. a transfer pitch designating means for repeatedly counting the number N of clock pulses corresponding to the period of the carrier timing pulse each time the carrier timing pulse is input;
The difference between the N count data input from the transfer pitch designation means, the count data of the number n of clock pulses counted by the transfer pitch designation means up to the time when the detection signal of the detector is generated, and the high speed value of the accelerating conveyor. A regulating operation time determining means for calculating the number of pulses corresponding to the required low speed operating time from the value ratio C, and a regulating operating time determining means for normally outputting a reference speed command signal for operating the accelerating conveyor at a high speed. a speed adjusting means for outputting a low speed command signal to operate the acceleration conveyor at a low speed for a time corresponding to the calculated number of pulses; A speed-governing type transfer device that includes a motor controller that controls the speed during conveyance of objects.