Abstract: A sheet feeder especially designed for use in the food and pharmaceutical industries is constructed in a hygienic manner and with suitable materials to permit rapid and effective cleaning and sanitizing thereof. Flexible, liquid impermeable bellows are mounted to the feeder housings in surrounding relation to the apertures through which the machine's several rotary shafts enter the housings. The bellows support bearing isolators that not only seal the housings from fluid entry, but because the bellows can flex, they also permit shaft spacings to be adjusted to adapt the machine to sheets of differing thicknesses and to set infeed belt tension. The sheet feeder's product input hopper and its discharge conveyor are designed to be easily detachable for cleaning in a dipping mode.

Abstract: A sheet feeder feeds product, one at a time, from the bottom of a stack onto a second stage discharge conveyor in which the serialized products are brought into precise registration prior to being deposited onto a moving web. To achieve registration, the products are transported at a higher rate than the speed of a pair of timing belts having regularly spaced lugs projecting therefrom. The lug timing belts are positioned beneath the belts transporting the product with the lugs projecting into the product's path of travel. The speed deference is that a leading edge of the products is brought into engagement with the trailing edge of a laterally aligned pair of lugs before the product arrives at the discharge point of the second stage discharge conveyor. The transport rate on the second stage discharge conveyor is controlled to match the speed of the moving web.