Abstract: An improved straw dispenser dispenses a plurality of straws simultaneously into the open tops of a corresponding number of beverage containers in a container making machine. The dispenser has a plurality of dispensing stations, each containing a rotary index wheel which picks up a succession of straws from a hopper and delivers them one after another into a separate chute which guides the straws into a separate delivery tube positioned directly above a beverage container. The index wheels at all of the stations index in response to a signal from the container making machine in synchronism to drop a set of straws into those tubes. Gates at the lower ends of the tubes open simultaneously and drop the set of straws then in the tubes into containers positioned below them before the new set of straws reaches the tubes.

Abstract: The invention disclosed is a machine for applying in series a molded plastic shell-like carrier over a pre-arranged grouping of containers, such as bottles. The machine includes a storage magazine turret supplying the carriers in nested fashion to a hopper device at a feeding station. The magazine turret indexes a magazine to the feeding station and a cam-operated device releases the nested carrier stack in a magazine to the underlying hopper. A carrier feed device continuously separates the lowermost carrier and drops it to an underlying carrier delivery conveyor. Bottles are advanced in parallel rows under the conveyor and past a carrier gate at the end of the carrier conveyor. First star wheel mechanism spaces the bottles on the conveyor to correspond as groups with compartment cavities in the carrier. Bottles moving through the first star wheel pull carriers from the feed gate; whereupon each such carrier falls over a group of bottles.