It is an object of the present invention to provide a filling machine which does not suffer from these disadvantages, i.e
. a filling machine in which the stroke of the piston of each cylinder can be separately adjusted to provide a discharge volume on each stroke which is very close to the minimum required, and in which the wear on the driving mechanism for the pistons is reduced to very small proportions.
According to the invention a filling machine of the type described incorporates mounted on the stub shaft of each piston a sleeve which is coaxial with the stub shaft and is axially movable on the shaft, locking means for locking each sleeve in a chosen axial position on its stub shaft, and slipper means supported by each sleeve in driving contact with the tracks.
A filling machine for filling containers as claimed in claim 5 incorporating a fixed column having a surface parallel with the rotational axis of the receptacle and a clamp connecting the track member to the vertical column, the clamp being operable to lock the track member to the column at a chosen point on the surface thus holding the track member at a chosen angle of inclination.
There is an additional disadvantage associated with the filling machine. It is well known that cylinders which appear to be physically identical have different volumetric efficiencies. The effect of this is that individual cylinders will fill different quantities of material into the containers. The trouble here is that there are statutory regulations which require that the minimum quantity within a specific container must not be less than that which the container is stated to contain. Thus it has been heretofore necessary to arrange that the quantity of material pumped by the cylinder with the lowest output is not less than the statutory minimum so that all the other cylinders are pumping more than is necessary and are actually filling too much material into the respective containers. When it is understood that a machine of this kind is capable of filling many thousands of containers each day the quantity of excess material filled becomes a heavy additional charge on the production cost and yet cannot be recovered in the selling cost.