Sheet-material associating – Associating or disassociating – Sheet associating
Reexamination Certificate
2002-10-25
2004-06-08
Mackey, Patrick (Department: 3651)
Sheet-material associating
Associating or disassociating
Sheet associating
C270S058030, C270S052150, C198S718000, C198S464300
Reexamination Certificate
active
06746007
ABSTRACT:
TECHNICAL FIELD
The present invention relates generally to a mail inserting system and, more particularly, to the document releasing and collating section of a mail inserting system.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
In a typical mailing inserting system, a plurality of enclosure or input document feeders are used to release enclosure documents onto a chassis or deck. The released documents are gathered, collated and pushed by a plurality of pusher fingers toward the downstream end of the chassis for envelope insertion. Mail inserting systems are known in the art. For example, Roetter et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 4,169,341) discloses a mail inserting system consisting of a document collation section and an envelope insertion section, wherein a plurality of document feeders are used to release documents onto a continuous conveying mechanism that collects and collates the documents and then conveys the collated documents to the envelope insertion section in a continuous manner. Such a mail inserting system is shown in FIG.
1
. As shown in
FIG. 1
, the mail inserting system
1
has an envelope insertion section
8
and a document release and collation section
10
having an upstream end
102
and a downstream end
104
. The envelope insertion section
8
is located adjacent to the downstream end
104
, where an envelope feeder
14
is used to feed envelopes
12
onto an envelope insertion area
106
. In the document releasing and collation section
10
, a plurality of enclosure feeders
20
are used to feed enclosure documents
22
onto a chassis or deck
26
. The released documents
22
are gathered, collated and pushed downstream by a plurality of pushed finger pairs
40
mounted on two chains or belts
42
, as shown in FIG.
2
. The belts
42
carry the pusher finger pairs
40
from the upstream end
102
to the downstream end
104
of the document release and collation section
10
, whereby the collated documents are conveyed to the envelope insertion area
106
for envelope insertion. The belts
42
move in synchronism with each other so that the pusher fingers in each pair
40
are also moved in synchronism with each other. Advantageously, the belts
42
also move in constant speed so that the enclosure feeders
20
can release the documents in synchronism with the approaching pusher finger pairs
40
. Each enclosure feeder
20
has a plurality of rollers
24
for releasing the documents, one at a time. The rollers
24
of the enclosure feeder
20
can be under the control of a central enclosure feeder control module
70
(see FIG.
4
). If there are M enclosure feeders
20
that are actually used in the mail inserting system and each of the feeders
20
releases one document to each approaching pusher finger pair
40
, then each pusher finger pair
40
will gather and collate a total of M enclosure documents from the upstream end
102
to the downstream end
104
.
If one or two pusher fingers in a pair
40
in the document release and collation section
10
are missing, broken, loose or otherwise defective, they may not be able to push and collate the enclosure documents normally. Consequently, paper jams may occur. If an operator of the mail inserting system notices this mishap in time, the operator can halt the operation and repair the defective pusher fingers. Thus, a paper jam can be averted. Even so, the halting of the machine for pusher finger repair causes a disruption of the mailing operation. Production mailing machinery is designed to have uninterrupted availability to maximize throughput of the mailing operation. Repairs count against throughput by making the machine unavailable during the repair.
It is advantageous and desirable to provide a method and system for controlling the releasing and collating of documents in a mail inserting system so as to minimize the disruption to the mailing operation due to non-functioning pusher fingers.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
A typical mail inserting system, such as that shown in
FIG. 1
, comprises a large number of pusher finger pairs. For example, there are 46 such pairs fixedly mounted on the belts. If all of them are functioning properly, then 46 pusher finger pairs are available for document gathering and collating in one cycle. If one of the pairs is not functioning, it only affects 2.2 percent of the production throughput per cycle. Thus, it is advantageous and desirable to take this non-functioning pusher finger pair out of the operation while using all remaining pusher finger pairs to gather and collate the release documents. So long as the non-functioning pusher finger pair does not impair the operation of the mail inserting system, it will be ignored in that it is not used for document gathering and collating. At the end of mail operation, the customer of the mail inserting system may decide to repair the non-functioning pusher finger pair or keep operating the system with a slightly reduced throughput.
Thus, according to the first aspect of the present invention, there is provided a collation system for collating generally flat items. The system comprises:
an upstream end;
a downstream end;
a deck extending from the upstream end to the downstream end;
a plurality of feeders, each positioned relative to the deck so as to be able to release the items onto the deck;
a continuous moving member running from the upstream end toward the downstream end;
a plurality of pusher pairs mounted on the moving member, each pair disposed in a pre-determined position and associated with a section of the moving member in front of said pair for pushing from the upstream end to the downstream end the items released into said section by the feeders; and a sensing mechanism for sensing the position of the pusher pairs in order to determine whether a pusher pair is functional as to said pushing based on the sensed position of said pusher pair, so that the feeders release the items only onto the sections of the moving member associated with functional pusher pairs.
According to the second aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method of improving the performance of a collation system for collating generally flat items, wherein the collation system comprises:
an upstream end;
a downstream end;
a deck extending from the upstream end to the downstream end;
a plurality of feeders positioned relative to the deck so as to be able to release the items onto the deck;
a continuous moving member running from the upstream end toward the downstream end;
a plurality of pusher pairs mounted on the moving member, each pair disposed in a pre-determined position and associated with a section of the moving member in front of said pair for pushing from the upstream end to the downstream end the items released into said section by the feeders. The method comprises the steps of:
sensing the position of the pusher pairs;
determining whether the pusher pairs are functional as to said pushing based on the sensed positions; and releasing the items only onto the sections of the moving member associated with functional pusher pairs.
According to the third aspect of the present invention, there is provided a mail inserting system for inserting enclosure materials into envelopes for mailing. The system comprises:
an envelope insertion section for providing the envelopes for insertion;
a collation section for collating the enclosure materials, the collation section having:
an upstream end,
a downstream end adjacent to the envelope insertion station,
a deck extending from the upstream end to the downstream end,
a plurality of feeders, each positioned relative to the deck so as to be able to release the enclosure materials onto the deck,
a continuous moving member running from the upstream end toward the downstream end, and
a plurality of pusher pairs mounted on the moving member, each pair disposed in a pre-determined position and associated with a section of the moving member in front of said pair for pushing from the upstream end to the downstream end the enclosure materials released into said section by the feeders so as to convey the pushed enclosure materials
DaCunha Steven J.
Skinger Gregory P.
Chaclas Angelo N.
Cummings Michael J.
Mackey Patrick
Malandra, Jr. Charles R.
Pitney Bowes Inc.
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