Apparatus for dispensing individual plastic fasteners from fastener stock

Abstract

An apparatus for dispensing individual plastic fasteners from fastener stock, includes a housing and a hollow slotted needle mounted onto said housing. An indexing wheel is rotatably disposed within the housing and advances a fastener to the rear end of the needle. A rocker is slidably disposed within the housing and serves to move the cross-bar of the fastener in parallel with the needle bore. A plunger is disposed within the housing and is capable of being slidably displaced by a trigger assembly. An ejector rod is fixedly mounted onto the plunger and serves to push the cross-bar of the fastener out of the front of the needle. An indexing slide separate from the rocker is slidably disposed within the housing and serves to rotatably advance the indexing wheel after the ejector rod pushes the cross-bar of the fastener out the front end of the needle.

Description

technical field [0001] The present invention relates to a device for dispensing individual plastic ties from a tie stock. Plastic ties of this type are well known in the art and have a crossbar at one end and a blade at the other end with a filament or cross-joint connecting the two ends. This type of fastening piece has been widely used commercially to fasten name tags, price tags or other items on commodities, which can greatly reduce the risk of unintentional detachment from the commodity. Typically such plastic ties are supplied in the form of blanks which are molded or stamped from a flexible plastic such as nylon, polyethylene, or polypropylene. Background technique [0002] In one well-known form of tie stock, the crossbar end of each tie is connected to a slide bar to form a tie clip. Another known form of tie is often referred to simply as a trapezoidal stock, in which there is a pair of elongated side bars joined by a plurality of cross junctions or filaments. O...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

Since the second tie will be aligned into the hollow needle before the previous ejection stroke is complete, this will cause the first and second tie to enter the hollow needle at the same time, creating a serious risk of jamming, which is extremely undesirable

[0008] A second disadvantage is that tag guns of the type described in US Patent No. 4,288,017 have a relatively large number of different parts, many of which are spring loaded

Accordingly, such tag guns have been found to be relatively expensive, time consuming and difficult to manufacture, which is highly undesirable

[0009] A third disadvantage is that the type of tag gun described in U.S. Patent No. 4,288,017 uses a rather complicated process of advancing the tie to the rear end of the needle, turning the end bar of the tie into alignment with the needle hole, and turning the end bar into alignment with the needle hole. Pushing out through the pinhole creates a rough and difficult trigger stroke which is also highly undesirable

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