Planar media-feed apparatus
AssigneeEastman Kodak Company
InventorEric P. Hochreiter
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Apparatus for feeding a planar medium from a host tray with a media cavity, including a feed edge adjacent to which the medium is extracted, a sidewall perpendicular to the feed edge, and a spring plate for lifting the medium towards a feeder; a media carrier nested in the cavity, including an edge guide to prevent the medium from moving toward the sidewall, the edge guide having an alignment face for orienting the medium with respect to the feed edge; and an alignment guide in the cavity and having a media guide and a baseplate wider than the medium and disposed over the spring plate, so that the baseplate is lifted when the spring plate lifts. The alignment face and alignment guide together prevent the medium from skewing with respect to the feed edge while the medium is extracted by the feeder.
Claims12
A media-feed apparatus for feeding a planar medium, comprising:
- a) a feeder;
- b) a host tray out of which the medium is extracted by the feeder, including a feed edge adjacent to which the medium is extracted, a sidewall perpendicular to the feed edge, a cavity adjacent to the sidewall for holding the medium, and a spring plate laterally contained within the cavity for lifting the medium towards the feeder;
- c) a media carrier nested immovably in the cavity and laterally contained within the cavity, and including an edge guide positioned relative to the feed edge and the sidewall to prevent the medium from moving toward the sidewall, the edge guide having an alignment face spaced apart from the sidewall and positioned relative to the sidewall to orient the medium with respect to the feed edge;
- d) an alignment guide laterally contained within the cavity and having a media guide and a baseplate of a selected width greater than the width of the medium and disposed over the spring plate, so that the baseplate is lifted when the spring plate lifts;
- and
- e) wherein the alignment guide is positioned relative to the alignment face and the media guide is positioned relative to the baseplate and the alignment face and is oriented relative to the sidewall to hold the medium so that the alignment face and alignment guide together prevent the medium from skewing with respect to the feed edge while the medium is extracted by the feeder.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.