CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This patent application claims priority from Italian patent application no. 102018000001636 filed on 22/1/2018, the entire disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference .

TECHNICAL FIELD

The invention relates to a method for packaging firewood and to a machine for carrying out said method.

BACKGROUND ART

Firewood is normally supplied loose or in the form of logs loaded on pallets or packaged in bunches with a substantially circular cross-section.

The pallet packaging turns out to be useful when supplying relatively large quantities of wood and requires users to have a space where to store one or more whole pallets as well as a suitable access to get to said space. In case at least one of the aforesaid requirements cannot be fulfilled, the pallet needs to be unpackaged and the wood needs to be stored in a loose manner, with a significant waste of time and work. Furthermore, the manufacturing, the disposal or the recovery for a subsequent use of the pallet are relatively expensive.

The bunch packaging can be used in the presence of smaller quantities or in those situations where there are no proper spaces available for the access to and/or the storage of pallets.

Furthermore, said bunches are substantially formed manually and, therefore, they are wasteful from the point of view of labour.

DISCLOSURE OF INVENTION

The object of the invention is to provide a method for packaging firewood which solves the above-mentioned problems .

The aforesaid object is reached by a packaging method according to claim 1.

The invention further relates to a machine for packaging firewood according to claim 4.

According to the method of the invention, the formation of bunches in a substantially automatic manner allows labour costs to be significantly reduced. This allows said bunches to be produced in an economic manner even in countries where labour costs are high, using local wood. This also leads to a decrease in transportation costs .

A further reduction in transportation and storage costs is obtained thanks to the fact that the bunches have a parallelepiped shape. Furthermore, these bunches can also be easily transported on pallets.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

These and other advantages of the invention will be best understood upon perusal of the embodiment described hereinafter and shown in the accompanying drawings, wherein :

figure 1 is a schematic side-elevation view of a machine for packaging firewood according to the invention; figure 2 is a partial perspective view, from the top and from a side, of the machine of figure 1;

figure 3 is a partial perspective view, from the top and from an opposite side, of the machine of figure 1; and figure 4 is a partial cross-section along a vertical middle plane of the machine.

BEST MODE FOR CARRYING OUT THE INVENTION

With reference to figure 1, number 1 indicates, as a whole, a machine for manufacturing bunches 2 of firewood logs 3 according to the invention.

The machine 1 basically comprises a forming unit 4 to form a stack 5 (figure 4) of horizontally arranged logs 3, a cutting unit 6 to separate the bunches 2 from the stack 5, and a strapping device 7 to strap the formed bunches 2.

More in particular, the forming unit 4 basically comprises a container 8 with the shape of a parallelepiped elongated in a vertical direction and having an upper opening 9 with dimensions equal to the cross-section of the container .

The cross-section of the container has a longitudinal side 10 with a length rounding up the length of the logs, and a transverse side 11 preferably, though not necessarily, equal to the longitudinal side 10.

The container 8 comprises a pair of longitudinal side walls 14 extending over the entire height of the container; the side walls 14 can be continuous or also interrupted along a central vertical area.

The container 8 further comprises two transverse side walls 15, 16 (figures 2, 3), each interrupted at a predetermined distance from a bottom surface 17 so as to form respective openings 18, 19 with a width equal to the width of the container 8. The expression "bottom wall" does not imply the existence of a continuous bottom wall; the bottom wall can consist of any element o group of elements, continuous or not and not necessarily part of the container 8, suited to define a support surface of the stack 5.

On the sides of the opening 19 of the wall 16 there are, extending longitudinally, respective guide walls 20 having a length which is smaller than half the length of the logs and a height which is substantially equal to the height of the opening 19. The walls 20 preferably are slightly converging towards one another.

On the opening 19 there is a movable stop 21. The stop 21 conveniently has a guide portion 24, which is guided so as to vertically slide along the wall 16, and a stop plate 25, which projects on top of the walls 20. The stop plate 25 conveniently is slightly inclined downward.

According to a preferred embodiment of the invention, the stop 21 is pushed downward by elastic means, for example consisting of a pair of springs 26 wound around guide bars 27 of the stop 21 and compressed between stop elements 28, 29 integral to the container 8 and to the stop 21. As a person skilled in the art clearly understands, the guide bars 27 and the springs 26 can be replaced by any other type of guide and elastic thrust element, arranged in any possible manner.

The stop 21 is preferably provided with a stop element, which stops it downward flush with an upper edge of the opening 19. This stop element can consist, like in the figures, of an upper edge of the walls 20.

The cutting unit 6, in the example shown herein, consists of a wood splitter facing the opening 18 of the wall 15 of the container 8. The wood splitter 6 is provided with a hydraulic cylinder 34 with a horizontal axis A and with a tool 35 described below.

The tool 35 basically comprises a thrust plate 36, which is fixed to a free end of a rod 37 of the cylinder 34, is orthogonal to the axis A and faces the opening 18, and a cutting plate 38, which is fixed to an upper edge of the thrust plate 36 in an integral manner and is arranged horizontally on a cutting plane placed immediately under an upper side of the opening 18, at a distance D from the bottom surface 17 of the container 8 preferably equal to the inner transverse dimensions of the container. These dimensions are conveniently chosen in such a way that the resulting bunch has a weight that can be handled by a grown-up person (10-20 Kg) .

The thrust plate 36 and the cutting plate 38 have dimensions that are such as to go through the opening 18. The cutting plate 38 extends longitudinally on opposite sides of the thrust plate 36 and is divided by the thrust plate 36 into a cutting portion 40, which ends in a wedge- shaped cutting edge 41 (hereinafter referred to as "the edge 41" for the sake of brevity) facing the container 8, and into a support portion 42, which faces the cylinder 34; each one of the portions 40, 42 of the cutting plate 38 extends longitudinally over a length which is substantially equal to the inner longitudinal extension of the container 8.

In the retracted position of the rod 37 (shown with a broken line in figure 4), the wedge 41 is extracted from the container 8; the stroke L of the cylinder 34 is such as to bring the thrust plate 36 flush with the wall 16 in the extracted position of the rod 37 (shown with a solid line in figure 4 ) .

Downstream of the container 8 there is a roller plane 45 for the sliding of the formed bunches 2 (figure 1) . The strapping device 7 can consist a known in-line automatic strapping machine. The strapping device 7 is arranged immediately downstream of the guide walls 20 and is supplied by the roller plane 45 going through it. Alternatively, the strapping device can be provided with its own input and output supplying conveyor belts.

The machine 1 works as follows .

The wood, in the form of logs 3 elongated in a longitudinal direction (parallel to the axis A) , is inserted into the container 8 from the top. This can take place manually or through a suitable hopper (which is not shown) . Therefore, the wood defines, inside the container 8, a stack 5 with a rectangular cross-section.

Once the stack 5 is formed, the wood splitter 6 is started. The rod 37 moves with a reciprocating motion.

During a first step of the extraction stroke, the wedge 41 separates a bunch 2 of logs with height D from the stack 5. The cutting step requires a relatively small power thanks to the orientation of the logs in a longitudinal direction; in this way, the wedge 41 can easily penetrate the fibres of the wood, just like a conventional wood splitter. Going on with the stroke, the thrust plate 36 pushes the formed bunch 2 out of the container 8 through the opening 19 (figure 4) . In this step, the wedge 41 comes into contact with the stop plate 25 of the stop 21 and the inclination of the wedge 41 determines the lifting of the stop 21 against the action of the springs 26. After having reached the limit stop position, in which the thrust plate 36 is, as already mentioned above, in line with the wall 16, the formed bunch 2 is completely on the outside of the container 8, laterally held by the guide walls 20 and projecting from them. The portion of stack 5 arranged above the cutting plate 38 is supported, during this step, by the support portion 42 of the cutting plate 38.

In this position, the bunch 2 is already arranged in the strapping position of the strapping device 7, where a plastic or metal strap 46 is applied. At this point the bunch 2 is complete.

The forward stroke of the rod 37, besides cutting and extracting the bunches 2 from the container 8, feeds the bunches along the roller plane 45 in a step-wise manner.

The return stroke of the rod 37 produces, at first, the lowering of the stop 21, which, together with the walls 20, helps hold the bunch 2 still during the strapping and during the cutting of the subsequent bunch.

When the tool 35 is completely extracted from the container 8, the stack 5 is not supported any longer and falls to the bottom of the container 8; then, the cycle can start again as described above.

Owing to the above, the method according to the invention basically consists of the steps of:

inserting a plurality of horizontally oriented wood logs into a container having a rectangular cross-section so as to form a stack;

cutting the stack at a predetermined height from a bottom surface of the container so as to separate a bunch from the stack;

removing the bunch from a side opening in the container;

strapping the bunch.

According to a preferred embodiment of the invention, the cutting step and the removing step are performed with a common drive .

Finally, the packaging machine and method disclosed herein can be subjected to changes and variants, which do not go beyond the scope of protection of the invention set forth in the appended claims .

The cutting operation, which in the example described herein is carried out with a wood splitter which also performs the removing step, can be carried out with any other cutting method (disc cutting, band cutting, chain cutting or even laser cutting) .

The expulsion of the bunch 2 from the container 8 can be performed by means of the cutting movement, as described above, or in an independent manner by means of a hydraulic or pneumatic cylinder or also by means of an electric actuator, a conveyor belt or other known transport means.