A conveyor apparatus for carrying workpieces on flat trays has two parallel chains with tray supports connected at equal intervals between the two chains. Each tray support has a clamping device for clamping and releasing flat silicone rubber covered trays against itself. Cams are located between the chains to operate the clamping device to release the tray (for travel through a separate path) at one point in travel and later (when the tray returns from its separate path) to clamp it again. The conveyor is shown as combined with up-and-down elevator means in an oven to give a boustrophedontic path to a plurality of workpieces being heated on trays in the oven: the trays are released and clamped at the entrance to and exit from the oven to allow movement of the trays by the elevators through up and down paths at the release and clamping stations.
A heating furnace system is provided for receiving finite lengths of workpieces from one or more continuous casters and form a supply of heated workpieces at a temperature suitable for rolling in a hot rolling mill. The system includes, in one aspect, a holding furnace receiving a workpiece during continuous casting until it is severed by a cutoff device to prevent unwanted cooling. The workpiece is fed from a holding furnace to a heating furnace wherein it is deposited onto one of a series of vertically spaced supports in a heated section where it remains static throughout the heating process. After heating the workpiece is removed from the stationary supports and returned to rollers of a hearth for discharge from the furnace to a rolling mill. In a second embodiment the holding furnace arrangement provides for separate holding furnaces to receive continuous castings from separate continuous casters and prevent unwanted cooling of the cast workpiece until cut to a finite length. The holding furnaces have doors and longitudinal sides walls to allow transfer of the workpieces seriatim through doors in a central heating furnace. The central heating furnace is aligned with the hearth as in the first embodiment and supplies workpieces serially through the heating furnace.
A heating furnace system is provided for receiving finite lengths of workpieces from one or more continuous casters and form a supply of heated workpieces at a temperature suitable for rolling in a hot rolling mill. The system includes, in one aspect, a holding furnace receiving a workpiece during continuous casting until it is severed by a cutoff device to prevent unwanted cooling. The workpiece is fed from a holding furnace to a heating furnace wherein it is deposited onto one of a series of vertically spaced supports in a heated section where it remains static throughout the heating process. After heating the workpiece is removed from the stationary supports and returned to rollers of a hearth for discharge from the furnace to a rolling mill. In a second embodiment the holding furnace arrangement provides for separate holding furnaces to receive continuous castings from separate continuous casters and prevent unwanted cooling of the cast workpiece until cut to a finite length. The holding furnaces have doors and longitudinal sides walls to allow transfer of the workpieces seriatim through doors in a central heating furnace. The central heating furnace is aligned with the hearth as in the first embodiment and supplies workpieces serially through the heating furnace.
A wafer block magazine for a shorttime intermediate storage of wafer blocks is characterized by two or more juxtaposed storage towers, which are provided with vertical conveyors, which inside each storage tower define horizontal storage compartments for the wafer blocks, which storage components are adapted to be vertically raised and lowered. The first storage tower includes a feeding station for receiving the wafer blocks. At least the last storage tower includes a taking station for delivering wafer blocks. The magazine is also characterized by a vertically displaceable horizontal conveyor for forwarding the wafer blocks between horizontally aligned storage compartments of the storage towers.
In a method for the conveying of workpieces such as printed circuit boards along a conveying path in steps wherein for temporary buffering storage the workpieces are diverted along at least one loop with two temporary storage paths running in opposite directions, the invention ensures that the workpieces are not inverted and are kept in the same order since the length of such paths being changed jointly in a way dependent on an increase and decrease of the degree of charging thereof, in the case of which after each number of steps, equal to the number of steps of the conveying path the overall temporary storage device is moved by one step and therebetween after each step of the conveying path the temporary paths are moved with the temporary storage device inactive through respectively one step and after each movement of the temporary storage paths with the temporary storage device inactive and the end of the temporary paths there is a parallel transfer of the workpieces from one temporary storage path to the next one.
A conveyor system for pivotally suspended carrier containers travelling through a closed path composed of interconnected straight portions each lying at a right angle to the previous and to the next portion. The subsequent portions of the path through which travel the carrier containers are each composed of a sub-conveyor comprising two parallel straight flights interconnected by 180.degree. bends. The suspension system of the containers together with a guiding rail render it possible for each container to pass from one sub-conveyor to the next one at a right angle crossing point.
