Adhesive bonding and miscellaneous chemical manufacture – Surface bonding means and/or assembly means therefor – With cutting – punching – piercing – severing – or tearing
Reexamination Certificate
1998-06-10
2004-05-04
Gray, Linda L. (Department: 1734)
Adhesive bonding and miscellaneous chemical manufacture
Surface bonding means and/or assembly means therefor
With cutting, punching, piercing, severing, or tearing
C156S256000, C156S270000, C156S277000, C156S358000, C156S364000, C156S566000, C270S058320, C399S381000, C399S382000, C399S405000, C399S407000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06729376
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The invention relates to a sheet feeding apparatus for an image processing device such as a printer, copier, or facsimile machine, and more particularly, to a sheet feeding apparatus that separates the sheets into groups.
RELATED ART
A conventional sheet sorting apparatus is located at the sheet output location of the sheet feeding apparatus. When the image processing device outputs sheets, the sheets are piled on a single tray, one by one. If the sheets in the tray make up a single group, and the group of sheets is removed before the next group is output, then there is no problem. However, if multiple groups of sheets are output to the tray, separate groups are not distinguishable.
Previous sheet sorting designs use several methods to distinguish the groups, such as adding an offset function or a ribbon inserting function. The offset function offsets the stack of sheets in each group in the tray. A disadvantage of this method is that the group divisions are easily lost when the sheets are removed from the tray.
The ribbon inserting function inserts a ribbon between each group of sheets. With this design, the sheet feeder must pause while the ribbon is placed on top of the last sheet in a group, and the sheets in the new group can only be output when the ribbon placement is finished. This adds to the total output time of the sheet feeder. Also, the ribbons can easily fall out of the stack of sheets when they are removed from the tray, and the separate groups are again lost.
Another previous design makes use of multiple trays, one for each group. This design leads to a large apparatus and high cost. Moreover, the use of multiple trays is not practical for a small device.
Despite the several developments in the art of separating the sheets into groups, there remains an opportunity to improve the sorting of sheets in an image processing device. In particular, there exists a need for a simple, small and inexpensive apparatus that easily sorts sheets into groups, and makes these groups readily distinguishable on a single output tray.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The main object of the invention is to provide an apparatus that easily sorts sheets into groups, and makes these groups readily distinguishable on a single output tray. The sheet sorting apparatus should be simple, small and inexpensive.
According to an aspect of the invention, there is provided a sheet sorting apparatus located at the sheet outlet location of an image processing device, the sheet sorting apparatus having marker attaching means for attaching markers at a certain position on the output sheets. The marker attaching means is comprised of a tape feeding mechanism in which the tape has an adhesive surface along one side edge, a cutter for the end of the tape to make a marker, guides to position the marker in the proper location on the output sheet, a marker attaching roller, and a feeder for feeding the sheet and marker together as one unit. The feeder presses the marker against the sheet to attach it. A special adhesive is used on the markers, so that a certain minimum amount of pressure is needed when a marker is adhered to a sheet. This pressure is provided by the feeder.
The image processing apparatus includes input devices such as scanners, OCR systems, copiers, and facsimile machines, which have image reading function, in addition to the output devices already mentioned which have image printing function.
An advantage of this invention is the markers for separating groups are attached to the sheets so that they won't fall out if the sheets are removed from the output tray. Another advantage is there is no pause in the feeding of the sheets to add markers between the groups, so there is no time-loss.
REFERENCES:
patent: 3245859 (1966-04-01), Busk
patent: 3926713 (1975-12-01), Lowe et al.
patent: 4070220 (1978-01-01), Cavender
patent: 4966644 (1990-10-01), Clark, Jr. et al.
patent: 5390594 (1995-02-01), Nobile et al.
patent: 5556492 (1996-09-01), Vonderhorst et al.
patent: 5807457 (1998-09-01), Norman, Jr. et al.
Hanaki Kazuhiko
Kakinuma Takeshi
Kamei Akihiro
Ohmae Koichi
Ozeki Norihito
Gray Linda L.
Morrison & Foerster / LLP
Omron Corporation
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