Abstract: A guard for preventing the operator's fingers from contacting the sharp edges of a parallel rack of blades in a food slicer, such as a tomato slicer is provided by a set of parallel planar segments intermeshed between and extending slightly in front of the sharp edges of the blades when the pusher is deployed away from the blades in position for introducing the object (tomato) to be sliced between the pusher and blades. A latch, such as a gravity latch, holds the assembly in the open guarded position until the tomato is introduced and the latch is released. In a rotary slicer a small portion of the blades adjacent the pusher are unguarded to facilitate introduction and prescoring of the tomato.

Abstract: A pneumatically operated mechanism for feeding envelopes or other similar stacked articles from a stacked position into a second position where stamping, gluing or the like may be performed. The feed mechanism includes a pneumatic cylinder having a fixed piston rod and a movable cylinder driven by a slide wheel mechanism in such a manner as to create a vacuum at a reciprocating, article engaging, slide shuttle when the cylinder is moved in one direction. When the cylinder is moved in a reverse direction the vacuum is released, allowing the article engaging shuttle to return to the stacked articles for reapplying the vacuum for removing an article.