Abstract: A bag machine is disclosed wherein bags are supplied from a bag holder such as a bag magazine to a multi-station bag filler whereat they are filled and are then supplied to a bag closer which closes and seals the filled bag. The multi-station bag filler is shown with four stations with bags being supplied to a bag pickup station therein from the bag closer. The bag filler includes a frame rotating on a base with gripper hands carried on arm means. The gripper hands grip face-to-face over the two top corners of a bag in the pickup station. A motor is provided to index the frame into the four different stations with a second station being a bag opening station whereat the gripper hands move toward each other and move upwardly to move the opened bag up onto an openable spout. A third station is a bag-filling station whereat material is delivered from a hopper via the spout to the opened bag. The fourth station is a bag-discharge station to the closer-sealer.

Abstract: The openable end of a collapsed bag is aligned in an alignment station on the base of the bag aligner machine. The bag is removed from a bag pickup station by a pick-off arm and moved to a preliminary position. At this point the bag is transferred to a bag holder which moves upwardly relative to the base to move the openable end of the bag into a bag-edge locator. This locator includes first and second alignment members which are interconnected in generally a V configuration and the bag openable edge is moved by a first motor into the open V end between the first and second alignment members to abut the closed V end under the urging of the first motor and additional urging of resilient means. This positively locates the edge of the bag so that it may be subsequently gripped, opened and then filled at a subsequent filling station.