Abstract: The present invention provides an improved apparatus particularly adapted for removing fluid from overlapping sheets of material, said apparatus comprising an inverted T-bar adapted for applying stationary pressure to overlapping sheets disposed beneath said T-bar, and at least two roller assemblies, said roller assemblies each including a lower pressure roller and an upper drive roller, said drive roller being in frictional contact with both said pressure roller and a superstrate positioned above said drive roller, at least one roller assembly being positioned on each side of said T-bar such that said pressure roller and said drive roller are substantially parallel thereto, and said roller assemblies being adapted to apply a moving pressure through said pressure rollers to overlapping sheets diposed beneath said roller assemblies.

Abstract: An automatic collating machine for organizing into groups a flow of articles, such as ice cream sandwiches, fed to the machine to be packaged into containers includes a carrier feed station and a container loading station, both of which are located along a vertical path of movement of a plurality of equally spaced, elongate, flexible carriers that are moved around a loop including said path in a stepwise fashion. The articles fed to the machine are received at the carrier feed station where a preselected number of the articles are loaded onto an empty carrier thereat. Each time a carrier is loaded, the loop of carriers is incrementally advanced to move the loaded carriers toward the container loading station and to move the next empty carrier to the carrier feed station to repeat the carrier loading cycle.