Patent CN215656472U - Sorter with Anti-Clogging Feeder

When cylindrical batteries leave the production line they have to be sorted into quality grades and collected separately. The specification of CN215656472U is blunt about the failure of the conventional way: sorting easily suffered from battery clogging, which pushed up the sorting reject rate. If the feeding stage jams, nothing downstream can be graded correctly.

The patent answers at the point where clogging happens - the feed. Two anti-clogging plates and a motor-driven wheel-type filler turn a simple hopper into a controlled, jam-free feeder, an internal-resistance detector grades each cell before it enters the conveyor, and four air cylinders route every cell to the bin of its grade.

Patent Information

The Production Problem This Patent Solves

Feeding jams break a sorting line. Processed cylindrical cells must be sorted into different quality grades and collected and stored grade by grade. In conventional sorting the cells jam at the feeding stage, and the specification states that this raises the sorting reject rate. A sorter that cannot feed reliably cannot grade reliably.

Grading must happen before routing. To put each cell into the right bin the machine has to know something about the cell first. This design measures internal resistance as the cell passes from the feeder onto the conveyor, and only then decides which bin the cell belongs to.

How to sort batteries without clogging - to raise production efficiency and the qualification rate - is the technical problem the patent sets out to solve.

How the Mechanism Works

The machine is arranged around a main body on four base feet, with the anti-clogging feeder on the left, the grading and conveying line across the middle, and the storage bins above. Figures 1-5 give the structural, side, rear, isometric and top views; Figure 6 enlarges detail A.

Anti-clogging feeding hopper

The anti-clogging hopper is screwed to the left part of the main body, with a first groove in the body below it. Its left wall is transparent glass so the operator can watch the feed. The feeding hole on top leads down to two anti-clogging plates, screw-fixed in the hopper, that break up cell build-ups. Beneath the plates sits the wheel-type filler, whose centre shaft is concentric with a first motor mounted outside the hopper. The filler meters the cells one by one toward a first through-hole at the bottom of the hopper - the specification attributes the prevention of battery clogging to this combination of two anti-clogging plates and the wheel-type filler.

Internal-resistance grading at the transfer point

An internal-resistance detector on the rear side of the hopper carries an internal-resistance probe aligned concentrically with the hopper through-hole. As each cell leaves the feeder and before it is loaded onto the transport device, the probe measures its internal resistance. The result is classified and stored by the controller, which sits on the fixing rod of the main body with an indicator lamp on top.

Conveying, spacing and binning

The transport device has a bracket screw-fixed to the main body and a semi-elliptical belt in the middle of the bracket. Partition plates pass through the belt and are fixed to the bracket, holding the cells apart as they travel. The bracket is driven by a second motor housed in the third through-hole of the main body. On the rear side of the transport device stand four air cylinders: as the belt carries each cell past the storage area, the cylinder of the matching grade pushes the cell into the corresponding battery storage device, whose tail is level with the transport height. Each storage device has a fixed baffle on its side and a detachable front baffle, so a full bin of sorted cells can be opened and emptied easily.

Working sequence as published: parameters are set on the controller; cells are poured into the anti-clogging hopper; the cells pass the anti-clogging plates and enter the wheel-type filler; before loading onto the transport device the internal-resistance detector measures and classifies each cell and stores the class in the controller; as the belt transports the cells, the four air cylinders push each cell into the storage device of its measured internal-resistance class.

Claimed Benefits

How It Compares with Conventional Cell-Sorting Feeders

In conventional sorting, cells jam at the feeding stage, and the specification states that this raises the sorting reject rate. A sorter that cannot feed reliably cannot grade reliably - so this patent starts with the feed.

Where This Technology Is Used Today

CN215656472U covers the anti-clogging feeding and internal-resistance grading architecture of TOB's battery sorting equipment - the station where finished cylindrical cells are separated into quality grades before packing or further processing.

• Battery sorting and grading machines - equipment for sorting cylindrical cells by test results
• Battery testing systems - testing equipment used before grading and routing

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Frequently Asked Questions

Full specification and drawings: CN215656472U on Google Patents