Winding – tensioning – or guiding – Convolute winding of material – With cutting – perforating – or notching
Reexamination Certificate
1999-08-27
2001-04-17
Nguyen, John Q. (Department: 3653)
Winding, tensioning, or guiding
Convolute winding of material
With cutting, perforating, or notching
C242S533400, C242S538200, C242S559200
Reexamination Certificate
active
06216975
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a processing arrangement for web shaped material rolled onto reel before and after processing. More particularly, the invention relates to a processing arrangement for photographic rolled up material, for example a photoelectric scanner for developed photographic films (film scanner).
2. Background Information
In photographic film laboratories, it is common to splice together films which are to be processed to long film webs and to wind these webs onto suited reels to form rolls. The film material is fed to the processing arrangement, for example, a photographic printer, in rolled up form and is after processing once again wound up in the form of a roll.
The processing of the material is thus carried out by roll (batch wise), whereby the normally continuous treatment process must be interrupted more or less long during the change of the film rolls or reels at the input or output side of the processing arrangement. In order to keep these system based interruptions as short as possible, which are especially annoying in modern high performance photo laboratories, very powerful unwind and windup arrangements have already been developed which guide the film contained on an unwind roll fully automatically to the input of a respective processing station and fully automatically guide the film leaving the processing station to an empty windup roll and wind it thereonto. A further reduction of the interruption times has been achieved with the use of so called reel carousels. These reel carousels have two or more receiving stations for full or empty film reels and transport those reel receiving stations, and thus the film reels therein, sequentially into a working position and one or more exchange positions. While the unwind roll is in the working position and the film material thereon is fed to the processing station, the empty film reel at the exchange station can be replaced with a new unwind roll containing film material to be processed. Analogously, while a windup reel is in the working position and takes up processed film material coming from the processing station, a full reel at the receiving station in exchange position can be replaced with a new, empty windup reel. A high performance printer equipped at the input and output sides with such reel carousels and fully automatic unwind or windup arrangements is disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,337,118 (corresponding to EP-B-0 543 069).
The apparatus cost for such reel carousels is relatively high. Furthermore, with the mentioned known high performance printer, the operator must change the film reels in two separate steps at two spatially separate locations of the printer.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
It is now an object of the present invention to improve a processing arrangement of the generic type so that the apparatus cost is reduced and the handling simplified and facilitated.
This object is achieved in accordance with the invention in a processing arrangement for web shaped material which is before and after processing wound onto reels, especially developed photographic rolled up material, with a processing Station for the material and corresponding transporting means for transporting the material through the processing station, with an unwind arrangement for the automatic feeding to the processing station of material to be processed and located on an unwind reel positioned in an unwind position, and with a windup arrangement for automatically guiding and winding processed material exiting the processing station onto a windup reel positioned in a windup position, whereby a common reel carousel is provided which is adapted for receiving at least three reels.
According to the main idea of the invention, only one single, common reel carousel for windup and unwind reels is used. The constructive cost is thereby reduced and the operation of the arrangement is facilitated and simplified in that the reel exchange need only be carried out at one location of the arrangement and in only one step of operation.
A further important aspect is that the common reel carousel supports two pairs of wind-up and unwind reels meaning that it is then possible to process different film formats, as a certain number of different film formats require this certain number of pairs of wind-up and unwind reels so as to be automatically processed. For instance, two film formats require two of said pairs, where as if there were only three reels, it would be necessary for an operator to interfere manually in order to change the wind-up and unwind process from one film format to another.
REFERENCES:
patent: 4138073 (1979-02-01), Dowd
patent: 0 543 069 A1 (1993-05-01), None
patent: 2 128 593 (1984-05-01), None
Burns Doane , Swecker, Mathis LLP
Gretag Imaging AG
Nguyen John Q.
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