subject: Background Of The Cable Tray Forming Machine [print this page] Background Of The Cable Tray Forming Machine
The cables move along a cable tray forming machine until they are completed, whereupon the cables are typically moved laterally away from the cable production machine in single file fashion and toward the tray forming and packaging machines. This single file lane of cables must then be formed into a number of rows of cables compatible with the numbers and rows of cavities or cells of the cable tray into which they are loaded. Due to the large volume of cables being produced in modern bakeries, a reliable, simple, and efficient method and apparatus is needed for forming the separate lane of cables into spaced rows of Roll Forming Machinery, whereupon the spaced rows of cables are loaded directly into the cells of the cable tray in order to minimize handling of the cables.
Roll Forming Machines, as such, are known in the art. Among the prior art devices used for forming cables and the like are devices used for forming a plurality of separate lanes of cables into rows by using gates or a series of spaced fingers which come into physical contact with the cable, such as that disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,303,811 issued to Haley on Apr. 19, 1994. Although this method of aligning cables into rows and spacing the rows of CNC plasma cutter apart from each other works well with most cables and crackers, this apparatus is not intended for use with chocolate-covered cake-type cables. In these devices the gates or fingers may damage the cables, as well as having layers of chocolate or other product residue deposited thereon from the cables having come into contact with the gate.
Another feature of the prior art cable tray loaders is that they accumulate cables and place them in an intermediate chamber or tray, and then transfer the accumulated cables from the intermediate chamber into the cable tray used for packaging the cables. Examples of these types of cable tray forming machine is disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,712,356 to hard age. In each of these cable loaders, a plurality of cables are moved along a series of conveyor belts in single file fashion, or in a plurality of generally aligned lanes, to then be accumulated in an intermediate cell, tray, or chamber, whereupon the collected cables or crackers are transferred into the cable trays.
