BOTTLE CONVEYING EQUIPMENT

Apparatus is described for conveying newly formed, hot bottles from the forming machine to an annealing lehr which is conventionally positioned with its lehr mat or belt running in a direction parallel to the movement of the transfer conveyor. The transfer conveyor surface is driven at a first speed as it passes in front of the multiple section glass forming machine. After passing the machine sections, the conveyor, made of a plurality of horizontal links, has the individual, successive links moved closer together to, in effect, shorten the length of the link belt conveyor. This shortening is the result of the drive for the link belt conveyor being discontinued just after the belt is engaged from beneath by a magnetic link belt chain driven at a slower speed. The chain is guided in a first straight line parallel to the machine conveyor direction and then guided through a 90 DEG arc to pass in front of the lehr so the bottles can be transferred from the conveyor surface to the lehr mat with a lehr loader. The system described above may be doubled so that two conveyors are provided to carry the bottles to the lehr and thus the speed of the conveyors does not need to be as fast and the bottles are more stable during transfer.