Abstract: An apparatus for handling facing sheets for application to pressed board and other laminate stacks adapted to be bonded together comprises a feed device for causing engagement of the uppermost sheet of a pile of facing sheets with a pick-up device of a drum which destacks the sheets individually and advances them to an assembling table at which the laminate stack is formed. The drum is associated with a reversible drive for enabling the trailing end of the sheet to pass a discharge point, whereupon reversal of the direction of rotation of the drum feeds the sheet with its trailing end foremost to the laminate stack thereby enabling the facing sheets to be applied alternately with their top faces turned upwardly or downwardly.

Abstract: A plurality of chutes are spaced downstream of a supply of comminuted material. A first transport band displaces the material upwardly out of the supply and drops the material into the first chute. Some of the material dropped into the first chute is spread by a distributing brush at the bottom of the chute onto the transport band and the balance of the material is picked up by a second transport band extending upwardly out of the first chute and terminating above a second chute so as to drop this material into the second chute whence it is deposited by another distribution brush onto the belt on top of the material deposited from the first chute. Both of the transport bands are inclined at the same angle to the horizontal and are independently driven at different speeds.

Abstract: In order to carry boards or plates between two locations, a rack spanning these locations supports a pair of independently elevatable track structures each comprising a group of parallel rails interleaved with those of the other track structure. The rails of each group are engaged by respective carriages together forming a transport unit, each carriage being provided with several depending suction cups for picking up a workpiece. A transport unit carrying a workpiece moves on a lower level in one direction whereas an idle transport unit returns in the opposite direction on a higher level, thereby avoiding interference of the returning unit with the working unit and its load.

Abstract: Trays carrying hot-pressed boards, coming from a platen press, are delivered by an input conveyor to a cooling rack comprising an endless vertical transporter with chain-supported radial arms forming peripherally separated tray-receiving stages, the boards being stripped off the oncoming trays and being temporarily retained on the input conveyor as the trays advance into stages then aligned therewith. Upon the loading of each tray into a transporter stage, the board previously stripped therefrom is released and passed by the input conveyor on through a clearance between successive stages on the ascending side of the slowly moving transporter into the nip of a set of feed rollers which drive that board through a similar clearance on the descending side onto an output conveyor.