Abstract: Apparatus for transferring pouches from a conveyor into product buckets of a cartoner. The pouches are deposited in shingled fashion in spaced groups on two slow moving parallel conveyors. Mounted on the same frame are two fast-moving conveyors which overlap the slower conveyors. At the junctions of the conveyors check and release mechanisms are provided which in the load engaging position raise the level of the slow conveyors above the fast ones and in the disengaged position raise the fast conveyors above the slow conveyors to facilitate the transfer. The pouches are transferred to the fast moving conveyors to increase the longitudinal separation between pouches. Two side-by-side groups of pouches are marshalled at the end of the fast moving conveyors by another check and release mechanism. The fast moving conveyors are swung alongside continuously moving product buckets, and during such swinging movement the pouches are deposited into the product buckets.

Abstract: In a cartoning machine, a series of L-shaped product buckets mounted on a chain conveyor and a series of inverted L-shaped tamper-confiner elements mounted on a conveyor chain overlying the product buckets, the tamper-confiner elements being cammed to form, with the product buckets, a gradually closing, generally rectangular compartment whose inside dimensions are substantially the same as the carton into which the product is to be inserted. The structure permits the gradual shaping of a pouch to the size necessary for insertion into a carton.