More specifically, this invention refers to a device by means of which it is possible to simultaneously pick up a number of bottles arranged side by side, normally unfastened, on a pallet, transfer them to a conveyor and subsequently place them on said conveyor.

The invention is intended mainly for application in the drinks bottling industry, for example wine.

BACKGROUND ART The bottling of drinks at an industrial level is normally carried out on premises where washing, filling and packaging of the bottles is performed.

The bottles (like other types of containers, such as cans or jars, arranged on pallets) are generally made from glass, but can also be made from synthetic materials, for example PET.

On leaving the production plant, the bottles are arranged side by side, according to repetitive patterns depending on the size of the bottles, in several layers one on top of the other on a pallet.

This pallet is normally transported by appropriate means (for example a fork lift truck) to the infeed conveyor of the drinks bottling plant.

In this area, infeed is carried out manually or by means of special devices.

Manual infeed is carried out by an operator who picks up 4 or 6 bottles at a time from the pallet and places them on the conveyor, starting from a layer which may be situated at a height of more than two metres and finishing with a layer just a few centimetres from the ground, for a number of bottles varying from two thousand to three thousand an hour, corresponding to around twenty thousand bottles a day.

Alternatively, a device normally known as a depalletizer operates in the aforesaid area, simultaneously picking up all the bottles making up a layer from the pallet, transporting them to the said conveyor and placing them on this conveyor.

Numerous types of depalletizers are known.

A first type of known depalletizer consists of a bottle pick-up head mounted on a fixed column provided with a first translation movement along an axis parallel to the longitudinal axis of the column and a second rotation movement at an angle of 90° around the said axis of the column.

The head can be equipped with a series of pneumatic tubes with an electropneumatically controlled layer squaring unit, or with a series of grippers made from rigid plastic sections, also with an electropneumatically controlled layer squaring unit.

The tubes or plastic sections are inserted in the first layer between the necks of the bottles to be picked up; thanks to an electropneumatic control, the tubes are inflated or, respectively, the plastic sections move

towards the necks of the bottles and firmly grip them. In this way the entire layer of bottles can be picked up.

In operation, the depalletizer described above will automatically pick up, by means of the said pick-up head, a layer of bottles stacked on a pallet, rotate the picked- up layer of bottles by 90°, lower the said layer of bottles onto the bottling plant conveyor and release the hold on the necks of the bottles, thereby depositing them on the conveyor.

Albeit functional, the machine presents some problems and disadvantages which limit its use.

First of all, it functions by transporting the layer of bottles along a curved pathway, for example a 90° pathway, which poses considerable problems in terms of space; moreover, due to its automated design, this machine is very expensive and therefore not suitable for use in small plants, for example in non-industrial wine cellars that produce a limited number of bottles of wine.

Another known type of depalletizer consists of a fixed portal shape structure which is positioned at the end of the conveyor on which the layer of bottles picked up from the pallet are to be placed.

Inside this portal structure is a horizontally positioned rectangular frame which can be moved in a vertical direction along guides inserted in the uprights of the portal structure.

The long sides of the said rectangular frame are provided with sliding guides for the translation movement of a bottle pick-up head with a structure similar to the head of the depalletizer described above.

This translation movement takes place between a first

position, in which the pick-up head is above the bottles stacked on the pallet, and a second position in which the head is above the bottling plant conveyor.

The movement of the pick-up head is linear in this case, and the machine does not therefore involve any lateral encumbrance as with the first type described above.

However, this depalletizer is not without problems and disadvantages either.

First of all, it must be noted that the horizontal frame on which the pick-up head is mounted and slides constantly occupies a position above the conveyor loading area and above the bottle pick-up area on the pallet.

This makes it impossible to access the conveyor or, respectively, the pallet when the frame is lowered to pick up bottles or, respectively, to place them on the conveyor, which does not allow bottle loading and unloading times to be optimized, since it is for example necessary to wait until the frame is fully raised in order to remove a pallet or place a new pallet in the bottle pick-up area of the machine.

Furthermore, this too is an automated machine which is too costly for small bottling plants.

A further known type of depalletizer foresees the use of a pick-up head suspended from a cable or chain-operated raising device which runs along a beam positioned horizontally above the conveyor and the pallet.

The operator guides the head, equipped with long handles, above the layer of bottles, picks them up and transfers them to the conveyor.

This solution presents a number of problems connected

above all with the difficulty of centering the bottles on the layer, since the head suspended from the cable can move freely along the three axes x, y and z, and the entire centering operation (which takes place at a height varying from 2 metres to around 15 cm) is the responsibility of the operator and depends on his ability.

An incorrect evaluation can move some of the bottles or cause them to fall, thus preventing pick-up of the layer.

Furthermore, the beam is supported by four fixed columns which hinder access.

DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION This invention aims to overcome the problems and disadvantages typical of the known technique, and to provide therefore an economic depalletizer device which does not take up too much space and which makes it possible to centre the bottles with precision and to easily access the working area which is not operational during the functioning of the device in the other working area.

This is achieved by means of a depalletizer device having the features described in the main claim.

The dependent claims describe particularly advantageous embodiments of the device according to this invention.

The depalletizer device according to this invention consists of a portal structure which is mounted mobile in translation on straight guides between a first position, in which the structure is positioned at the end of a conveyor belonging, for example, to a bottling plant, and a second position in which said structure is positioned in

an unloading zone of a layer of containers, for example bottles, stacked on a pallet.

According to this invention, a head for the pick-up of said bottles is mounted moving vertically along guides in the uprights of said portal structure in such a way as to lower itself onto the bottles, pick them up and lower itself onto the conveyor in order to deposit the bottles on it.

In operation, the portal structure is translated along these straight guides from the first bottle pick-up position to the second bottle deposit position on the conveyor, the movement of the structure being achieved by appropriate driving means or, according to a second particularly advantageous embodiment from the cost point of view, manually.

A depalletizer device of this type makes it possible to achieve a number of advantages with respect to the known solutions.

First of all, the device according to this invention restricts the vertical and horizontal movement of the pick-up head by means of guides and, by blocking the head on a special carriage, eliminates the oscillations on the third axis.

Thanks to this solution, the operator merely transfers the head horizontally from a fixed pick-up point to a fixed unloading point; the vertical carriage allows precise and repetitive descent to the various layers of the pallet, without any effort on the part of the operator.

Furthermore, the device according to this invention does not require the presence of a specific frame and a

mobile carriage inside the said frame, on which the pick- up head is mounted, making the machine lighter and more economical with respect to the known solutions.

In addition, since the entire portal structure consists of a mobile carriage on straight guides, when it is in the bottle pick-up position it allows free access to the conveyor and, on the contrary, during the bottle deposit phase on the conveyor, it allows equally free access to the pick-up area, for example so that an empty pallet can be removed and a pallet loaded with layers of bottles can be put in its place.

ILLUSTRATION OF DRAWINGS Other features and advantages of the invention will become apparent on reading the following description of one embodiment of the invention, given as a non-limiting example, with the help of the enclosed drawings, in which: -fig. 1 shows a schematic front view of a depalletizer device according to this invention; -fig. 2 shows a schematic side view of the device according to figure 1, positioned in correspondence with a conveyor; and -figures 3 to 8 show the various working stages of a depalletizer device according to this invention.

DESCRIPTION OF ONE PREFERRED FORM OF EMBODIMENT In figures 1 and 2, a depalletizer device 10 for containers, in particular bottles, consists of a portal structure with a pair of uprights 11,12 and a crosspiece 13.

Said portal structure is integral with a carriage consisting of a pair of support bars 14,15, each of which is equipped with a pair of wheels sliding on tracks 16,17

fixed to the floor.

Inside said portal structure a pick-up head 18 slides in a vertical direction, equipped for example with a number of pneumatically controlled tubular elements (not shown in the figures) or with pneumatically controlled rigid plastic elements (not shown in the figures); said elements can be inserted between the necks of the bottles present on a pallet 19 and, following the activation command given to the pick-up head 18, pick up a number of bottles forming a layer of bottles present on the pallet, and raise said bottles to a predetermined height thanks to a raising mechanism controlled by an appropriate motor 20.

The bottle pick-up mechanism is in itself well known and its conformation is well known to the skilled people; it will not therefore be described in greater detail here.

In accordance with the invention, at least one of the uprights 11,12 is equipped with a handle 21 thanks to which an operator can move the depalletizer device 10 manually from a first position, in which the pick-up head 18 is above the pallet 19 on which the bottles are present, to a second position in which the head 18 is above the surface 22 of a conveyor 23 activated by an appropriate motor 24 and forming part, for example, of a bottling plant.

According to another embodiment of the invention, the translation movement of the depalletizer 10 can be achieved by means of a small appropriate motor.

With reference to figures 3 to 8 the functioning methods of the depalletizer according to this invention.

In figure 3 the depalletizer 10 according to this invention has been moved along the tracks 16 in the

direction shown by the arrow A and the pick-up head 18 is above a layer of bottles present on the pallet 19.

With reference to figure 4, the pick-up head 18 is lowered onto the bottles (arrows B-B), and the pick-up elements are inserted between the necks of the bottles.

The pneumatic device (not shown) which controls the pick-up elements is activated and said elements clamp the necks of the bottles.

The pick-up head 18 is then raised (figure 5, arrows C-C'), lifting the entire layer of bottles.

The depalletizer is then translated (arrow D) along the tracks 16 until the pick-up head 18 is above the surface of the conveyor 23.

In the case shown in the figure, the pallet remains empty and, since the depalletizer has been moved to another position, the pallet can be removed and replaced with another pallet on which a number of stacked layers of bottles are present.

The raising and lowering mechanism of the pick-up head 18 is activated once again, and the layer of bottles is placed (figure 7, arrows E-E') on the surface of the conveyor 23; at the same time, the pick-up elements are disabled and, since they are no longer clamped, the bottles are carried by the conveyor towards other processing stations, for example towards the bottling plant.

Figure 8 shows the final position of the cycle, in which the head 18 is raised once again (arrows F-F'), and a new pallet 19', which in this case consists of four layers of bottles, is present in the bottle pick-up zone; the cycle starts again as described above with reference

to figure 1.

The invention is described above with reference to a preferred embodiment of the same.

It is however clear that the invention is susceptible to numerous variations that come within its objectives, in the framework of mechanical equivalents.

In particular, embodiment variations are foreseen according to which the depalletizer as per this invention can perform the transfer not only of bottles, but also of cans, jars and other types of containers for drinks or foodstuffs.

Moreover, although the invention has been described with reference to an advantageous embodiment, according to which the translation of the depalletizer takes place by means of manual operation, it is evident that the said depalletizer can be equipped with driving means for the movement of the same along the tracks.

Furthermore, although not described in detail, it is evident that the depalletizer according to the invention can be equipped with movement and safety control means such as for example limit switches, position sensors, etc.