Abstract: There is disclosed apparatus for incorporation in conventional bottle capping or bottle filling and capping machines to improve the handling of plastic bottles with pre-threaded screw caps and with a three dimensional bottom surface commonly employed and referred to as a petaloid shape. The normal flat table surface on which bottles rest while the cap is being screwed on is replaced with a surface having upstanding, radially-arranged fingers positioned to extend into all or most of the spaces between the lobes in the bottom of the petaloid bottle at each bottle capping station and form a nest for such bottles. Generally conventional bottle receiver and guide elements cause the bottles to assume a position substantially upright and coaxial with the center of the array of fingers for the particular bottle capping station. One embodiment of the apparatus includes a depression in the table surface to receive the bottom of a petaloid bottle and the fingers are located in that depression.

Abstract: There is disclosed a capping machine head for affixing screw caps on containers, which in one embodiment has a cylindrical magnet ring in the body of the head surrounding a cap chuck driving element in a low friction bearing in the head, each having an array of permanent magnets distributed around their periphery. For certain angular relative positions of the ring and the chuck driving element, the North poles of one are face-to-face with the South poles of the other; displacement from such position causes torque on the order of ten to twenty inch pounds to be imparted to the chuck driving element. The chuck driving element rotates with the magnet ring until the resistance of a cap being threaded on the container exceeds a predetermined torque limit, after which the magnet ring rotates relative to the essentially stationary chuck driving element. The ring magnets may be in an axially misaligned position to reduce and control maximum torque value.