A machine for automatically inserting a lath through the stems of tobacco plants while maintaining a fixed spacing between the plants. The spacing can be preset over a continuous wide range. The plants are steered to the point of a spear by a guide which withdraws or advances two arms an equal amount on each side of a spear, thus always keeping the plant centered. The plants are skewered by the spear, which contains a lath in a hollow core, and slid over the spear to be deposited over the lath.

An automatic armature production line comprising an assembling machine by which the component parts of an armature core assembly are assembled, a bank of armature winding machines by which the armatures are wound, a welding machine by which the wire leads connecting successively wound coils are physically and electrically connected to the terminals of the commutator, a testing station at which the completed armatures are tested for electrical continuity; and a transfer system by which the armatu...

A carousel-type drill rod rack handles a plurality of drill rods having normal diameter holding portions, flats below the holding portions, and reduced necks below the flats. The upper support plate has collars that receive the holding portions and have openings sized to allow removal only when the rods are raised to bring the necks in line with the plate. Cutouts in the upper support plate define two pairs of parallel straight surfaces that engage the flats to limit rotation in either direction...

A depalletizer apparatus for unloading containers or other articles stacked in tiers which are separated by paperboard upon a pallet. The apparatus has a pallet infeed section, an elevator means for sequentially raising a loaded pallet to a height of one tier and sweep means operated in conjunction with the elevator to remove each tier onto a conveyor. Also disclosed is a pallet discharge means, and a paperboard removal means which together with the sweep means operate to move the pallets, the c...

A plurality of safety devices associated with apparatus for picking-up fibers from bales and delivering such fibers to a hopper or the like, such safety device acting to warn the operator of such apparatus of a variety of malfunctions of the apparatus when they occur, and to activate controls for preventing damage to such apparatus or injury to personnel upon the occurrence of such malfunctions.

An arrangement for inserting utensils or similar small parts in a clamping frame for machining purposes. Adjacent stacks of parts to be machined are held in a magazine. A gripper provided with gripping elements grips simultaneously the upper part in each of the adjacently-lying stacks. The gripper moves downward into the magazine and cooperates with a clamping frame which, when open, takes from the gripper the parts that it picked up.

In a dump truck having a dump bucket pivotally mounted along one of its upper side edges to a bed, and a power device for tilting said bucket to dump its contents, said bed being supported by two axles carrying ground-engaging wheels, being pivotally mounted on one of said axles on a fore-and-aft axis, a stabilizer for locking the bed against tilting on its fore-and-aft axis during the dumping operation, the stabilizer consisting of cooperating ratchets and pawls carried respectively by the bed ...

A chain of pivotably interconnected drag buckets for removing material from the sides of a loose pile and for delivering the material to a secondary discharge conveyor. The drag bucket assembly is particularly designed to be pulled about a circular path and includes a forward end adapted to be connected to a towing device and a free rearward end loosely received on a flat supporting surface. As the forward drag bucket is pulled along, the remaining buckets move in the circular path but also migr...

A machine which takes upright stacks of flat articles such as carton blanks or the like from a pallet, straightens each stack, and feeds the articles from the stack in a shingled stream. The machine includes a crane which is programmed to pick up stacks from a plurality of locations on the pallet. Each stack is transferred to a conveyor which first advances the stack to a stack straightening device which tips the stack from upright to horizontal position to separate articles in the stack and str...

An article handling apparatus including a vertically reciprocable carriage provided with magnetic means for removing a single article from a stack of articles and delivering such article to an overhead conveyor which advances such article in a path normal to the path of movement of the carriage to a discharge station for removal from the conveyor upon demand.