through the neck thereof. The bottles may not be supported from the base even by a transparent support member during the inspection, as dirt located between the support member and the base of the bottle may be interpreted as being located within the bottle itself, thereby causing rejection of a large number of clean bottles. Similarly, the bottles may not be supported from the top for the same reason. Consequently, in such equipment, it is necessary to engage and support the bottles in some manner from the sides thereof during the inspection procedure.
The equipment of the type described hereabove is presently manufactured by Industrial Automation Corporation of Santa Barbara, California, and sold as their electronic bottle inspector. In such equipment, the bottles are delivered by conveyor to arotating assembly referred to as a starwheel which is adapted to engage the bottles from the sides at a first level adjacent to the top thereof and at a second level adjacent to bottom thereof. At the same time a rubber suction cup type device engages the bottle between the first and second levels and through the appropriate control of a vacuum delivered to the suction cup, the bottles may be retained or released as desired. The starwheel picks up the bottles from a supply conveyor, carries them past an inspection head and delivers the bottles to a delivery conveyor or rejected bottle corral as required. Those bottles which are indicated as being contaminated by the inspection head, are released by the vacuum device before the bottles reach