Sheet-material associating – Associating or disassociating – Signature associating
Reexamination Certificate
1999-07-02
2001-12-11
Ellis, Christopher P. (Department: 3651)
Sheet-material associating
Associating or disassociating
Signature associating
C270S058290, C270S052140, C198S349950
Reexamination Certificate
active
06328297
ABSTRACT:
TECHNICAL FIELD
The present invention relates to enclosure feeders in an inserting machine for mass mailing.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
In an inserting machine for mass mailing, there is a gathering section where the enclosure material is gathered before it is inserted into an envelope. This gather section is sometimes referred to as a chassis subsystem, which includes a gathering transport with pusher fingers rigidly attached to a conveying means and a plurality of enclosure feeders mounted above the transport. If the enclosure material contains many documents, these documents must be separately fed from different enclosure feeders. Each of the enclosure feeders feeds or releases a document at the appropriate time such that the trailing edge of the document released from the enclosure feeder is just slightly forward of a moving pusher finger. Timing and velocity control of all feeders are critical because during the feeding process a document is under the control of both an enclosure feeder motor and the gathering transport motor.
Currently one or more long endless chains driven by a single motor are used to move the pusher fingers in order to gather the enclosure material released from the enclosure feeders and send the gathered material to an envelope insertion station. It is preferable that the spacing of the pusher fingers attached to the conveying chain is substantially the same as the spacing of the enclosure feeders mounted above the conveying chain. A typical pitch for the enclosure feeders is 13.5″ (343 mm). Depending on the length of the document stacked on a feeder, the feeder is given a “go” signal to release an enclosure document on the conveying belt at an appropriate time.
After the machine has run a prolonged period of time, the conveying chain begins to wear and stretch, as is the case with steel chains. Consequently, the timing that is predicted can be off a substantial amount from one end of the machine to the other. The amount can be accumulated through tolerances, and the stretch can reach an amount that equals the smaller document that may be fed. For example, in a 20 station machine with a length of 22.5 feet, the 2% stretch would equate to 5.4 inches. This is greater than the smallest document to be fed.
Therefore, it is desirable to provide a method and apparatus to improve the timing between the transport and the feeders which compensates for chassis chain stretch so that the distance between a pusher finger and the trailing edge of a fed enclosure document is appropriate.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention provides a method and an apparatus for improving the timing between the enclosure feeders and the conveying chain in the gather section of an inserting machine. More specifically, the present invention uses two or more sensors and a processor to add an adjustment to the “go” signal timing for each of the enclosure feeders in a large chassis subsystem. If the spacing between two adjacent pusher fingers (without chain being stretched), or a pusher pitch, is equal to D, it is preferable to place a first sensor at one end of the chassis and a second sensor at a distance nD upstream from the first sensor, where n is a positive number and, preferably, an integer. With such sensors in place, the effective chain stretch can be calculated by multiplying the pusher speed by the time difference between the sensing of the arrival of a pusher finger by the first sensor and that by the second sensor. Assuming the stretch is linear throughout the conveying chain, an appropriate time delay can be determined and added to the “go” signal, or the releasing command, timing of a respective enclosure feeder in order to compensate for the problem associated with the wear and stretch of the conveying chain.
REFERENCES:
patent: 3702187 (1972-11-01), Hageman et al.
patent: 3825247 (1974-07-01), Fernandez-Rana et al.
patent: 5730436 (1998-03-01), Viebach et al.
patent: 5918729 (1999-07-01), Chang
patent: 5957263 (1999-09-01), Espenschied
patent: 6082724 (2000-07-01), Kahlig et al.
Antonelli Nicholas R
Sussmeier John W.
Cummings Michael J.
Ellis Christopher P.
Mackey Patrick
Melton Michael E.
Pitney Bowes Inc.
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